At the
1997 general election, Gibb was elected to Parliament as MP for
Bognor Regis and Littlehampton with 44.2% of the vote and a majority of 7,321. He made his
maiden speech on 4 July 1997. Shortly after his election, Gibb joined the
opposition frontbench of
William Hague when he was appointed as the spokesman on
trade and industry in 1997, before joining the
social security select committee later in the year. The following year, in 1998 he rejoined the frontbench as a spokesman on
the treasury, moving back to trade and industry in 1999. Gibb was reportedly involved in the faction-fight between supporters of
William Hague and
Michael Portillo, the then
shadow chancellor, as a supporter of Portillo. At the
2001 general election, Gibb was re-elected as MP for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton with an increased vote share of 45.2% and a decreased majority of 5,643. Following the election, Gibb was briefly a spokesman on
environment, transport and the regions but resigned under the leadership of
Iain Duncan Smith, reportedly because he was unhappy at his new role. Gibb was again re-elected at the
2005 general election, with a decreased vote share of 44.6% and an increased majority of 7,822.
Michael Howard brought Gibb back to the frontbench in 2005 as a spokesman for Education and Young People. Shortly afterwards, the newly elected
Conservative Party Leader,
David Cameron, promoted Gibb from within the education team to Shadow Minister for Schools. Gibb is a longstanding advocate of
synthetic phonics as a method of teaching children to read, having first publicly raised this in 2006. At the
2010 general election, Gibb was again re-elected, with an increased vote share of 51.4% and an increased majority of 13,063. After the formation of a
Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, Gibb was appointed Minister of State for Schools in the new
Department for Education. He was sacked in a reshuffle in September 2012, but returned to the same department, again as a Minister of State, in July 2014. Just days after being appointed as Minister for Schools in 2010, Gibb was criticised by teachers and educationalists after leaked information suggested he had told officials at the Department of Education that he "would rather have a physics graduate from Oxbridge without a
PGCE teaching in a school than a physics graduate from one of the rubbish universities with a PGCE". In 2012 Gibb was reported to have described attempts to include public speaking classes intending to foster empowerment among public students as "encouraging idle chatter in class". This statement was criticised by researchers at both
Cambridge University and the
Education Endowment Foundation who observed a link between public speaking classes and improved academic results and economic potential. He was sacked in a reshuffle in September 2012, but returned to the same department, again as a Minister of State, in July 2014. He supported the Remain campaign in the
2016 Brexit referendum. In November of the same year, he was appointed to the
Privy Council. At the snap
2017 general election, Gibb was again re-elected, with an increased vote share of 59% and an increased majority of 17,494. He was again re-elected at the
2019 general election with an increased vote share of 63.5% and an increased majority of 22,503. In July 2020, as
Minister of State for School Standards his department oversaw the controversial derivation of
A-level grades in place of exams cancelled due to the
COVID-19 pandemic. The system was subsequently described as having the effect of "people who come from areas where people have scored low are assumed to score low this year, and people who come from areas where people have scored high are assumed to score high this year". He was later confronted on the
BBC Radio 4 programme
Any Questions? by a student stating that Gibb had "ruined my life". Gibb responded by saying: "It won't ruin your life, it will be sorted, I can assure you." Gibb was sacked by the Prime Minister
Boris Johnson in the September 2021 reshuffle and returned to the back benches. On 4 February 2022, Gibb called for the Prime Minister to resign over
Partygate. It was reported he had submitted a letter of no confidence in Johnson to the chairman of the
1922 Committee. Gibb was re-appointed as Schools Minister on 26 October 2022 by
Rishi Sunak. His resigned this post on
13 November 2023, and announced that he would stand down from Parliament at the
2024 general election. This was after he had been reselected in March. == Post-parliament career ==