Freer was first elected to Barnet Council in 1990 for the St. Paul's ward, winning the seat from Labour. However, he lost the seat back to Labour in 1994 and went on to lose in the East Finchley ward in 1998. He was re-elected to the council, for the Church End ward, in 2002. He was unanimously elected leader of the council by his party on 11 May 2006, replacing Brian Salinger as Conservative group leader, having previously been Salinger's deputy. Following the collapse of Icelandic banks Glitnir and Landsbanki in October 2008 in which Barnet Council had invested £27.4m of council taxpayers' money, Freer was named Private Eye's "Banker of the Year" in its Rotten Borough Awards of 2008. The money was subsequently recovered. In 2009, Freer announced a new model of local government delivery for the London Borough of Barnet, called "Future Shape" which he stated could save Barnet Council £24 million a year. The scheme has been dubbed easyCouncil because of its similarity to easyJet's business model.
Parliamentary career
In the 2005 general election, Freer contested the Harrow West constituency in the neighbouring borough of Harrow. He finished second to the Labour incumbent Gareth Thomas, whose majority was cut from 6,000 to 2,000. He was elected as the Member of Parliament for the constituency of Finchley and Golders Green at the 2010 general election, and was re-elected in 2015, 2017 and 2019.
Freer is a member of Conservative Friends of Israel. Although he is not Jewish, The Jewish Chronicle in 2008 ranked him 99th in its list of 100 most powerful influences on the Jewish community. In 2014, Freer resigned as parliamentary private secretary to Nick Boles in order to vote against a backbench motion recognising Palestine as a state alongside Israel, arguing "the two-state solution we all want to see should be the end not the start of the process". In January 2016, the Labour Party unsuccessfully proposed an amendment in Parliament that would have required private landlords to make their homes "fit for human habitation". According to Parliament's register of interests, Freer was one of 72 Conservative MPs who voted against the amendment who personally derived an income from renting out property. The Conservative Government had responded to the amendment that they believed homes should be fit for human habitation but did not want to pass the new law that would explicitly require it. Freer was opposed to Brexit prior to the 2016 referendum. He was a vocal defender of the Prime Minister Theresa May after she and the Conservative Party received criticism for her role in the Windrush scandal in 2018. After a constituent wrote to him complaining about the Conservative Party's role in the scandal, he responded that it was nothing to do with the party and that they should not believe 'misrepresentations' from the Labour Party. On 1 April 2019 Freer was one of fifteen Conservative MPs to vote in favour of a People's Vote - a second referendum on the UK's membership of the European Union.
Other events
In October 2011, Freer was the target of an attack at a constituency surgery in a mosque in his constituency of Finchley by members of Muslims Against Crusades. In October 2019, Freer hosted a crocus planting ceremony in memory of the 1.5 million children who perished in the Holocaust, which was attended by around 100 members of the local community. Chair of the local Labour party Matt Staples subsequently claimed that Freer had "politicised" the event by not inviting "representatives from across the political spectrum".
Personal life
Freer is gay, which he revealed to fellow MPs during a speech in the debates over the Marriage Act 2013. He lives with his Italian husband, Angelo Crolla, in Finchley, north London. He entered into a civil partnership in January 2007. On the eighth anniversary of their civil partnership, in January 2015, they converted it into a marriage.
