In 1801 he served as a councilman in
Denbigh and in the same year was elected
Member of Parliament for
Denbigh Boroughs. While in Parliament, West gave a silent support to administration; he was initially listed as doubtful, then as a friend of
William Pitt's government in 1804 and 1805, opposing
Samuel Whitbread's
censure of
Viscount Melville on 8 April 1805. In 1806, he was ousted from Parliament by his brother-in-law,
Robert Myddelton Biddulph, who had married his wife's elder sister. Biddulph and West "did not see eye to eye, and although West did not himself seek to return to Parliament he sponsored the successful candidature of
Viscount Kirkwall against Biddulph in 1812, and in 1820 put up his son, who later represented the boroughs." He was a captain in the Berkshire Volunteers in 1803 and in the Berkshire militia in 1808. In the autumn of 1804, King
George III visited him at
Culham Court. Between 1810 and 1815, he was a
Groom of the Bedchamber. In 1813, he applied to
Queen Charlotte (who felt "a sincere regard" for him, his father having been "one of her earliest and most faithful servants") for "an Irish barony of the title of Myddelton chiefly with a view to give weight to that interest in the county of Denbigh which has been devoted to the support of his Majesty's government", although nothing came of it. From 1821 to 1822 he was
Sheriff of Berkshire. ==Personal life==