Royston Smith
Royston Matthew Smith, is a British Conservative Party politician and has served as Member of Parliament for Southampton Itchen since the 2015 general election. Smith was previously a councillor on the Southampton City Council.
Early life and career
Smith was born on 13 May 1964 Harefield, Southampton to Frank Wilmot and Marie Cecilia Smith. He grew up in the suburb of Bitterne Park, and attended Bitterne Park School.He became an engineer for the Royal Air Force in 1980, working on the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod fleet for 10 years. Smith then worked for British Airways as an aeronautical engineer at London Heathrow for 16 years.
Smith owned the local bike shop Triangle Cycles in Bitterne Park from 1993 to 2003, and was the chairman of the Triangle Traders' association. He founded the public relations consultancy Vigilo Ltd in 2006. He has been a director of 3S Fire Ltd, a fire management consultancy affiliated with the HFRS since 2013.
Local political career
Smith joined the Conservative Party after the 1997 general election. He had previously voted for the single issue Eurosceptic Referendum Party. He was first elected as a Conservative councillor for the Harefield ward in the 2000 Southampton City Council election. Smith had previously unsuccessfully contested the council elections in 1998 as an independent candidate and in 1999 as a Conservative. He was a cabinet member for economic development on the council between 2007 and 2010. He was the leader of the council until 2012 when the Labour Party took over the council.Smith was appointed as chairman of Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service in 2009 and was re-appointed in 2014.
In April 2011, while Smith was visiting the submarine HMS Astute as part of the tour, a sailor started shooting, and killed an officer. Smith intervened and helped apprehend the sailor. He was awarded the George Medal for his actions.
As council leader in 2011, Smith initiated an up to 5.5% pay cut on council employees as part of a bid to cut the council's expenditure by £76 million by 2015. In response, unions took industrial action by refusing to collect rubbish.
Parliamentary career
Smith stood as a Conservative candidate in the Southampton Itchen constituency in the 2010 general election. He came second in the seat, losing by 192 votes to the incumbent Labour MP John Denham. Smith was elected as MP for the constituency in the subsequent 2015 general election and was re-elected in the 2017 and 2019 general elections.House of Commons Select Committee Membership
Smith sat on the Work and Pensions Select Committee between December 2016 and May 2017. He was a part of the Committees on Arms Export Controls between October 2017 and July 2018.Smith has been a member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee since September 2017. He has the best attendance record out of all committee members, at 100%.
Brexit
Smith supported Brexit in the 2016 UK EU membership referendum. He voted for Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit withdrawal agreement on 29 March 2019. Smith also voted against any referendum on a withdrawal agreement in the indicative votes on 27 March. He then voted for the Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Brexit withdrawal agreement in October.In 2019, he successfully helped secure Government Brexit contingency funding for Southampton after writing a letter to Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government James Brokenshire. He made the case that Brexit-related gridlock caused by disruption at south coast ports could have a major impact on hospitals and other services. Smith believed Southampton needs tens of thousands of pounds to cope with what he describes as “every eventuality” in the letter. A few days afterwards, Southampton was awarded £273,000 to help the port cope with the impact of Brexit.
Campaigning for jobs and investment to Southampton
Smith has been campaigning for a fair deal for Southampton since he was a Councillor. In 2010, he fought for Itchen College when the Government withdrew funding, to protect Southampton's estate regeneration programme and get investment into Woolston shopping parade.In 2019, writing in The Times, Smith associated Southampton with post-industrial towns to make the argument that Government Ministers should look South not just North when it comes to Government priorities in regenerating cities. In an article for The Daily Telegraph in 2020, Smith similarly asked the Government to 'level up' Southampton, making the case that Southampton was one the first red wall seat gained from the Labour Party when he became the Conservative MP for the city in 2015, because Southampton had been overlooked by previous Labour Governments.
In the House of Commons Chamber, Smith asked the Government several times what is being done to create jobs with higher pay and better prospects.
Campaign to honour the Spitfire
In 2018, Smith met with the Minister with responsibility for coastal communities to discuss his campaign to honour the Spitfire and how Southampton could put in a bid to help fund a fitting memorial to the iconic aircraft. R. J. Mitchell designed the Spitfire in Southampton and its first flight was from Eastleigh Airport.On 28 March 2017, Smith held a Westminster Hall debate in Parliament calling on the Government to help fund The National Tribute to The Royal Air Force in Southampton. The debate received support from MPs on all sides of the house.
In Chancellor Rishi Sunak's first budget in 2020, it was announced that a planned memorial to commemorate the Spitfire is to receive a £3 million grant from the government. The year 2020 will see the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. Smith said the £6m scheme required matching funding.
Controversies
In 2011, Smith was stopped by police for not wearing a seat belt and later found to have been driving an uninsured car. He was fined and given six points on his driving licence.After the 2015 election, UKIP candidate Kim Rose claimed that he had received data on voters in the constituency and advice from Smith to assist his campaign. Smith denied the allegations. Police have looked into the matter and said Smith had no case to answer. Smith's local party association, Southampton Itchen Conservative Association was registered with the Information Commissioner's Office, and the Conservative Party Chairman at the time, Lord Feldman, wrote to complainants to say that no data protection breach had occurred.
On 20 February 2016, Smith was named by The Independent as Britain's least active MP out of all the MPs that were newly elected in 2015. Smith defended his record by stating that "I find Southampton is a challenging constituency." He added, "Southampton is a challenging constituency and I spend my time doing as much as I can locally. I don't spend hours in the House of Commons waiting to make a three-minute speech."
In December 2017, Smith suggested cyclists should only use roads with cycle lanes on them, stating that cyclists should "consider when and where they cycle" in order to "make the roads safer". The comments came after a 64-year-old cyclist died after colliding with a lorry on Portsmouth Road, Woolston. He was criticised by campaigners on the grounds that "we should be encouraging more people to use the roads, not less", while it was subsequently reported that Smith had recently called for £11.5 million in grant funding for the city's cycling strategy, such as creating new cycle lanes, to be diverted elsewhere.