He was first elected at the
1987 general election as Member of Parliament for
Battersea. From 1993 to 1996 he was a
health minister and from 1996 to 1997 he was a
Under-Secretary of State for Transport, before losing his parliamentary seat at the
1997 general election. At the
1999 European Parliament election Bowis was elected to represent the
London region. He was re-elected in
2004, and stood down at the
2009 election. He has been National Secretary of the
Federation of Conservative Students and worked at the
Institute of Psychiatry. He is an active member of the
ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly. He has served as president of
Gay Conservatives, an LGBT group within the Conservative Party. He is the incumbent vice president of the
Conservative Group for Europe (CGE). ==Notes==