Member of Parliament
Hammond was the chairman of the Lewisham East Conservative Association for seven years from 1989 and contested the 1994 Newham North East by-election caused by the death of the sitting Labour Ron Leighton, losing to Labour's Stephen Timms by 11,818 votes. He was elected to the House of Commons at the 1997 General Election for the new Surrey seat of Runnymede and Weybridge. He won the seat with a majority of 9,875 and has remained the MP there since. He made his maiden speech on 17 June 1997.
In 2009 it emerged that Hammond had claimed just £8 short of the maximum allowance for a second home in London from 2007 to 2008 even though he lived in the commuter belt town of Woking. As a result of the criticism Hammond said he would pay back any profit on the future sale of his second home to the public purse.
Read more about this topic: Philip Hammond
Famous quotes containing the words member of, member and/or parliament:
“In song and dance man expresses himself as a member of a higher community: he has forgotten how to walk and speak and is on the way toward flying up into the air, dancing.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“It was a maxim with Mr. Brass that the habit of paying compliments kept a man’s tongue oiled without any expense; and that, as that useful member ought never to grow rusty or creak in turning on its hinges in the case of a practitioner of the law, in whom it should be always glib and easy, he lost few opportunities of improving himself by the utterance of handsome speeches and eulogistic expressions”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“At the ramparts on the cliff near the old Parliament House I counted twenty-four thirty-two-pounders in a row, pointed over the harbor, with their balls piled pyramid-wise between them,—there are said to be in all about one hundred and eighty guns mounted at Quebec,—all which were faithfully kept dusted by officials, in accordance with the motto, “In time of peace prepare for war”; but I saw no preparations for peace: she was plainly an uninvited guest.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)