Nick Hawkins

Nicholas John "Nick" Hawkins (born 27 March 1957) is a lawyer and politician from the United Kingdom. He was a Conservative Party Member of Parliament from 1992-2005.

Hawkins was educated at Bedford Modern School and Lincoln College, Oxford, and called to the Bar at the Middle Temple in 1979.

Hawkins became a Member of Parliament representing the constituency of Blackpool South in 1992. Prior to the 1997 general election, with polls predicting that the Conservatives had no chance of retaining the Blackpool South seat, Hawkins applied and was selected to contest the newly-created constituency of Surrey Heath, which was predicted to be one of the safest Conservative seats in the country. He duly won the seat with a majority 16,287, the second-largest Conservative majority of in the country that year (after John Major in Huntingdon). Hawkins was re-elected in 2001 with a reduced majority of 10,819.

Hawkins served in Prime Minister John Major's government in 1995-97, first at the Ministry of Defence and then at the then Department of National Heritage. In opposition he was appointed and promoted in a series of shadow ministerial jobs by four different Conservative Party leaders. Among other roles, he was Shadow Solicitor-General in 2003, a Shadow Home Office Minister on national security issues and drugs policy, Shadow Legal and Constitutional Affairs Minister, and Shadow spokesman on gambling twice (2000–01 and 2003–04).

In April 2004, Hawkins was deselected as the Conservative Party candidate for Surrey Heath following a ballot of party members in the constituency. He was asked by the Party Leader and Party Chairman to stand again for a different constituency, but decided instead to return to the law. He remained a Member of Parliament until the 2005 general election. Michael Gove, a journalist at The Times newspaper, was selected as the new Conservative candidate for Surrey Heath in his place, and won the seat.

After leaving parliament, Hawkins returned to his previous career as a corporate lawyer; he had previously been a barrister on circuit from the late 1970s. He had also worked as in-house corporate counsel in banking, insurance, financial services and credit in the 1980s and early 1990s, was elected chairman of the corporate barristers' national organisation BACFI, and elected to serve on the Bar Council for six years and on its "inner cabinet", the GMC, for two years.