BLACKMAN
Robert
John

• 1. Early life and career
• 2. Political career
• 3. Member of Parliament
• 4. Campaigns
• 5. Personal life

Robert John Blackman (born 26 April 1956) is a Conservative Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Harrow East since 2010. He has served on the executive of the backbench 1922 Committee since 2012. He was the London Assembly member for Brent and Harrow between 2004 and 2008.

Early life and career

Blackman studied at the University of Liverpool and left with a Bachelor of Science degree. While at Liverpool, he was president of the students' union. He joined the sales team of Burroughs Machines (later Unisys) on graduation. He worked in various sales and management positions for BT and worked at their training school in Milton Keynes as a tutor and later as a regulatory compliance manager for BT until his election to Parliament.

Political career

Blackman unsuccessfully stood as the Conservative candidate in the Tokyngton ward of Brent London Borough Council in 1986. In 1990, he stood in the Preston ward and was elected; he retained the seat until 2010, when he did not stand. He was the leader of the Conservative group on Brent council from 1990 to 2010, having been council leader between 1991 and 1996, when his party lost control of the council. From June 2006 to May 2010, he was deputy leader of Brent Council, the Conservatives having formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

He unsuccessfully stood as the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Brent South at the 1992 election, for Bedford at the 1997 election, and for Brent North at the 2005 election.

He stood as the Conservative Party candidate for the London Assembly constituency of Brent and Harrow at the 2000 elections, losing to the Labour candidate Toby Harris. He defeated Harris at the 2004 assembly elections and was elected as the Conservative group's whip on the London Assembly. In the 2008 Assembly election, Blackman lost his seat to the Labour candidate Navin Shah by 1,649 votes.

Member of Parliament

In the 2010 general election, Blackman gained the Harrow East constituency from Labour's Tony McNulty. He was re-elected in 2015 and 2017.

In 2010 he was elected a member of the Communities and Local Government Select Committee and was elected secretary of the 1922 Committee in 2015[9] (serving jointly with Nigel Evans until 8 January 2020 when Evans became second deputy chairman of Ways and Means). In Parliament, Blackman serves on the Procedure Committee, the Backbench Business Committee and the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee.

Blackman supported Brexit in the 2016 referendum. He subsequently joined the European Research Group, a Eurosceptic group within Parliament.

Blackman is an officer of the Conservative Friends of Israel group. He has been part of several delegations to Israel, including during the Operation Defensive Shield conflict when he visited for an Israeli military briefing on the Iron Dome defence system.

In 2015, the compliance officer for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) made a judgement that Blackman had submitted 732 inaccurate mileage claims. According to IPSA he claimed up to 10 miles for a two-mile journey, making him the highest-mileage MP, claiming almost twice the mileage as the 10 next-highest MPs.

In 2017, Blackman drew criticism from Tom Peck of The Independent for hosting Tapan Ghosh, an anti-Islam extremist from India, at a House of Commons event in October 2017, as well as sharing anti-Islam posts on Twitter by far-right activist Tommy Robinson and being a member of numerous anti-Islam groups on Facebook. These comments and others by some Conservative candidates and representatives led the Muslim Council of Britain to call for an independent inquiry into alleged Islamophobia in the Conservative Party.

In March 2019, Blackman was among a group of MPs who argued for a number of measures to encourage people to quit smoking and prevent young people from taking it up, including raising the legal smoking age to 21 and introducing a levy on large tobacco companies.

In August 2019, Blackman expressed his support for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoking Article 370 of the Constitution of India, calling the article an "anomaly", adding that "Kashmiri Pandits must be guaranteed right of return after they were the victims of ethnic cleansing".

Azerbaijan All-Party Parliamentary Group

Blackman is the chair of the Azerbaijan All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG). In 2013, The Guardian published an article "Plush hotels and caviar diplomacy: how Azerbaijan's elite wooed MPs", criticising, among other British MPs, Blackman's five-day visit to Azerbaijan, paid for by The European Azerbaijan Society (TEAS). The National highlighted in 2022 that several of his trips to Azerbaijan were paid for by the Azerbaijani parliament or its London embassy. Blackman received a series of briefings from high-level Azerbaijani figures, including in 2020 and 2021 from Azerbaijani MP Javanshir Feyziyev, who was investigated by the National Crime Agency, followed by a court case where £5.6m of laundered cash was ordered to be seized from his family’s accounts. OpenDemocracy reported in February 2022 that Blackman tabled four pro-regime motions in the House and had written to two foreign secretaries, urging them to strengthen ties with Azerbaijan and condemn its opponent Armenia. Blackman told Eye To Eye podcast in July 2020 that he “put down positions on behalf of good friends in Azerbaijan" on a regular basis, that [referring to July 2020 Armenian–Azerbaijani clashes] "in these types of conflicts ... whoever gets the best propaganda tends to grab the attention of the listeners and the viewers", adding that in this regard he has been "fed the information through the Azerbaijan embassy in the UK", praising the latter for being "very very helpful and proactive". Blackman urged the then foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, to take Azerbaijan’s side in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. On Blackman's Azerbaijan lobbying, Steve Goodrich from anti-corruption group Transparency International UK commented "It's pretty shocking if you've got MPs essentially being briefed by foreign embassies and then making contributions in the House based on what they've been advised to say."

Campaigns

Blackman called for the adoption of plain packaging legislation for cigarettes, and supported Cameron's plan calling for energy companies to provide simplified energy bills to their customers. On 1 July 2015, Blackman was elected chair of the All Party Political Group on Smoking and Health, after serving as its secretary for several years.

In 2012, when the Conservative Party launched a consultation into legalising same-sex marriages, Blackman suggested that David Cameron should resurrect Section 28, stating that he believed that "Section 28 was the right rules to have in school so that we should not in any way shape or form promote same-sex relationships" and said he would be "very opposed" to seeing teachers being forced to say same-sex relationships are equivalent to heterosexual relationships. In December 2012, David Cameron announced his approval for same-sex marriage. In response, on 7 December 2012, Blackman told the BBC News Channel that Cameron's backing of religious same-sex marriages was wrong "on principle" and that marriage had to be "between one man and one woman". According to the Harrow Times, he was accused of hypocrisy by a former fellow Brent council colleague who claimed she had an 11-year affair with him whilst he was married. On 5 February 2013, Bob Blackman voted against the bill in the House of Commons second reading vote on marriage equality in Britain. In March 2019, Blackman was one of 21 MPs who voted against LGBT-inclusive sex and relationship education in English schools.

In 2016, he was drawn second in the annual Parliamentary ballot for a Private Member's Bill and put together a Homelessness Reduction Bill in partnership with national homelessness charity, Crisis. It was the first Private Member's Bill to be supported by a select committee. After receiving Government support at second reading, it passed through all stages in Parliament unopposed in both Houses and received Royal Assent on 27 April 2017.

Following an interim report on the connections between colonialism and properties now in the care of the National Trust, including links with historic slavery, Blackman was among the signatories of a letter to The Telegraph from the "Common Sense Group" of Conservative Parliamentarians. The letter accused the National Trust of being "coloured by cultural Marxist dogma, colloquially known as the 'woke agenda'".

Personal life

Blackman married Nicola Jennings in 1988. He employs his wife as a part-time office manager on a salary up to £39,999.

In 2000, it was made public that Blackman had had an 11 year affair (which began in the late 80s) with a colleague he met whilst working as a councillor at the Brent East Conservative Association. His then mistress, Carol Shaw, gave an affidavit about their affair to a solicitor in 2000 - after being persuaded to do so by one of Blackman's rivals who hoped to see him ousted as a group leader. The affidavit was copied and distributed amongst his fellow Conservative councillors by the rival.