Politics Having unsuccessfully contested
Bexhill and Battle in the 1983 general election, Pearson entered parliament for
Dudley West in a
by-election in December 1994, winning a
Conservative seat left vacant by the death of
John Blackburn in October of that year. He won the seat with nearly 70% of the votes, with the Conservative candidate receiving less than 20%. Boundary changes created the new constituency of
Dudley South in 1997 which he then represented. Pearson was
Parliamentary private secretary to the
Paymaster General Geoffrey Robinson from 1997 until Robinson resigned in 1998. In 2001 he returned to the government as a
whip. In 2002 he moved to the
Northern Ireland Office as a
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State. After the
2005 general election he was promoted to
Minister of State for Trade in the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In the PM's 2006 reshuffle, he was appointed as Minister of State for Climate Change and Environment at the
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. In an interview with
The Guardian published on 5 January 2007, Pearson courted considerable controversy by publicly criticising several airlines, particularly
Ryanair, for failing to pull their weight in lowering UK
carbon emissions. He described Ryanair as "the irresponsible face of capitalism". In response,
Michael O'Leary, the CEO of Ryanair, claimed Ryanair had made a considerable investment in
environmentally friendly planes and technologies and had the lowest fuel use per passenger figures of any British airline. O'Leary described Pearson as "silly", adding that Pearson "hadn't a clue what he [was] talking about". On 29 June 2007, Pearson was moved in
Gordon Brown's first reshuffle to become a
Minister of State in the newly created
Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills under Secretary of State
John Denham. Whilst there he was criticised for not doing anything to avert a funding crisis at the
Science and Technology Facilities Council hitting UK Astronomy and particle physics. In Gordon Brown's next reshuffle of 3 October 2008, Pearson was moved to the
Treasury as
Economic Secretary, also becoming
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for
Economics and Business. In the June 2009 reshuffle Pearson retained his role at the Treasury but lost his business role as the department was merged to create the
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. On 21 January 2010, Pearson announced that he would not contest the
next general election.
Business Pearson has been a non-executive director of Thames Water, a British water utility company, since 2014. He is a non-executive chairman of EQTEC PLC, an Irish multinational gasification company. He is also a non-executive chairman of the quantum technology company Quantum Exponential. ==References==