Lewis stood as the
Conservative candidate in
Swansea West at the
1983 general election, coming second with 36.6% of the vote behind the incumbent
Labour MP
Alan Williams. At the
1997 general election, Lewis was elected to Parliament as MP for
New Forest East with 42.9% of the vote and a majority of 5,215. In August 2000, Lewis attacked Conservative defectors to Labour due to the party supporting
Section 28, describing the "gay lobby" as supporting "propaganda promoting homosexuality" at the expense of taxpayers. Lewis was re-elected as MP for New Forest East at the
2001 general election with a decreased vote share of 42.4% and a decreased majority of 3,829. He was again re-elected at the
2005 general election, with an increased vote share of 48.6% and an increased majority of 6,551. Although Lewis was repeatedly listed as amongst the lowest-claiming MPs (ranked 566th out of 647 in 2008/09),
The Sunday Telegraph alleged in May 2009 that he had tried to claim the £6,000 cost of a wooden floor in his second home. He maintained that: "At no stage did I claim for the flooring and it did not cost the taxpayer a penny." A senior Commons official confirmed that, by seeking advice in advance about second home expenditure, he had acted "in accordance with best practice as recommended by this department" and that "it is not true that you attempted to claim £6,000 in expenses for a wooden floor at your second home". At the
2010 general election, Lewis was again re-elected with an increased vote share of 52.8% and an increased majority of 11,307. With the creation of the
Liberal-Conservative Coalition as a result of the election of a
hung parliament in 2010, the post which he had shadowed (Minister for the Armed Forces) was allocated to the Liberal Democrat Defence spokesman,
Nick Harvey MP. Lewis was appointed as a member of Parliament's
Intelligence and Security Committee in September 2010. He has also been a vice-chairman of the Conservative Friends of Poland. Lewis has been described by
The Daily Telegraph as "one of the most vigorous
rightwingers in the
Commons" and by
The Guardian as the Conservative Party's "front bench terrier". He was one of the Frontbenchers and Backbenchers of the Year chosen by commentators on the
ConservativeHome website, in December 2009 and December 2010 respectively. In February 2011, he strongly opposed, and was one of three Conservative MPs who voted against, Coalition plans to transfer heritage forests from public ownership to trusts. The plans were later disowned by the Government and abandoned. In October 2011, he was one of 81 Conservative rebels who voted in favour of a referendum on the UK's membership of the European Union and, in October 2012, he was one of 53 Conservative rebels voting to demand a real-terms cut in the EU budget. Both policies were later adopted by the party leadership. In May 2014, he was one of eight candidates for the chairmanship of the House of Commons
Defence Select Committee, coming second with 212 votes to the eventual winner's 226. On 17 June 2015, he was elected to chair the
Defence Select Committee in a three-way contest with
Richard Benyon and
Colonel Bob Stewart. In the Commons debate on 2 December, Lewis stated that "instead of having dodgy dossiers [as in the 2003 Iraq conflict], we now have bogus battalions of moderate fighters". He predicted that "Once Daesh has been driven out... an Occupying Power will have to remain in control for many years to come... and only the Syrian Government Army is likely to provide it... Airstrikes alone are a dangerous diversion and distraction. What is needed is a grand military alliance involving not only the West but Russia and, yes, its Syrian Government clients too.... We need to choose the lesser of two evils and abandon the fiction of a cosy third choice" between "very nasty authoritarians and Islamist totalitarians". After making this widely reported speech, Lewis voted against extending airstrikes against ISIL/Daesh into Syria in the absence of "credible ground forces", and he continued to maintain that, apart from the Kurdish-led forces, in Syria the choice remained "between monsters on the one hand, and maniacs on the other". Lewis was again re-elected at the snap
2017 general election with an increased vote share of 62.6% and an increased majority of 21,995. On 12 July 2017, he was again elected to chair the
Defence Select Committee, by 305 votes to 265 votes, in a direct contest with Johnny Mercer. Lewis was again re-elected at the
2024 general election, with a decreased vote share of 38.5% and a decreased majority of 8,495.
Accessibility Lewis is the only MP who does not allow his constituents to contact him by email. In a letter in
The Guardian he stated: "Letters, phone calls, and, where appropriate, surgery appointments are perfectly adequate for people who genuinely need my help, as the many letters of thanks quoted on my website fully confirm. Only mass, manipulative campaigners and obsessive individuals find this a problem – and so they should!"
Defence Committee Inquiries Among notable Inquiry reports produced under the chairmanship of Julian Lewis have been:
Shifting the Goalposts? Defence Expenditure and the 2% Pledge, published in April 2016, which concluded that the Government had met the minimum 2% NATO guideline only by counting "several significant items not previously included when calculating defence expenditure", although doing so in accordance with NATO rules. The report set out, in detailed Annexes, the decline in UK expenditure on Defence as a proportion of GDP since the mid-1950s in comparison with that on Welfare, Health and Education. It also led to the subsequent adoption by the Defence Committee of a target of 3% of GDP to be spent on Defence, as in the mid-1990s. In July 2019, the Committee published an
Update to
Shifting the Goalposts?, which confirmed that defence expenditure had declined in successive years to 1.9% (2014–15), then 1.8% (2015–16, 2016–17 and 2017–18), when "calculated on a historically consistent basis". Under the more generous NATO rules, the corresponding figures were 2.2% (2014–15), then 2.1% (2015–16, 2016–17 and 2017–18).
An Acceptable Risk? The Use of Lariam by Military Personnel, published in May 2016, which led to a significant reduction in the use of the anti-malarial drug mefloquine, and to the enforcement of stringent requirements before its prescription, on account of possible severe side-effects in some cases.
UK Military Operations in Syria and Iraq, published in September 2016, which revealed the great disparity between the large number of airstrikes being carried out in Iraq, where the UK was campaigning in support of substantial indigenous government ground forces, and the far lower total undertaken in Syria, where the UK could find only limited ground forces to support.
Open Source Stupidity – The Threat to the BBC Monitoring Service, published in December 2016, which strongly criticised the BBC's plan to close the dedicated headquarters of the Monitoring Service at Caversham Park, condemned the UK Government's previous decision to end its ring-fenced grant for the Service which had led to this outcome, and predicted that a state-owned Open Source Information Agency might eventually have to be established.
Investigations into Fatalities in Northern Ireland involving British Military Personnel, published in April 2017, which recommended the enactment of a Statute of Limitations coupled with a truth-recovery process as the best way to prevent the legal persecution of UK Service, Police and Security Personnel, decades after the events in question, whilst offering the best prospect of finding out what had actually happened during the Troubles.
Sunset for the Royal Marines? The Royal Marines and Amphibious Capability, published in February 2018, which excoriated the heavily trailed suggestion that the amphibious assault ships, HMS
Albion and HMS
Bulwark, would be removed from the Fleet 15 years early as part of the
National Security Capability Review. The report described the proposal as "a short-sighted, militarily illiterate manoeuvre totally at odds with strategic reality". After wide publicity, the plan was abandoned and the capability was saved.
Rash or Rational? North Korea and the Threat it Poses, published in April 2018, which concluded that Kim Jong-un is "ruthless, like other Communist dictators before him, but he is rational" and can be "dissuaded from the use of nuclear weapons by means of a policy of deterrence and containment" though "unlikely to give them up now".
Lost in Translation? Afghan Interpreters and other Locally Employed Civilians, published in May 2018, which recommended "a looser and more sympathetic approach" to admitting threatened interpreters to the UK, given that it "is impossible to reconcile the generosity of the Redundancy Scheme with the utter failure of the Intimidation Scheme to relocate even a single LEC to the United Kingdom". Subsequently, some liberalisation of the rules for relocation to the UK was introduced.
Beyond 2 per cent: A Preliminary Report on the Modernising Defence Programme, published in June 2018, which backed the removal of Defence from the "fiscally neutral" National Security Capability Review process – with its threats to impose further cuts on the Armed Forces, such as the deletion of the amphibious assault ships. The report recommended a financial settlement "based on a level of Defence expenditure approaching the figure of 3% of GDP", which would demonstrate that the mantra "Defence is the first duty of Government" could finally be believed.
Defence Committee innovations As well as those carried out by the full Defence Committee under his chairmanship, in 2015 Lewis initiated an arrangement for the Defence Sub-Committee to undertake separate individual inquiries chaired in turn by other members of the Defence Committee. Between 2016 and 2018 the Sub-Committee produced reports on military exercise deaths, the Iraq Historic Allegations Team and Defence in the Arctic. In February 2018, Julian Lewis and his French counterpart
Jean-Jacques Bridey agreed to launch a joint Inquiry by their respective committees into the UK-France future cruise/anti-ship weapon project. It was the first joint Inquiry to be held by a House of Commons Committee and a Committee of a non-UK legislature and reported in December 2018.
Intelligence and Security Committee On 15 July 2020, Lewis was elected Chair of the
Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (ISC) with the support of the opposition MPs on the committee. He defeated
Chris Grayling, who had been Boris Johnson's preferred candidate. Lewis had the Conservative Party whip removed later that day for what a government source described as "working with Labour and other opposition MPs for his own advantage"; but Lewis stated that he had never responded to government whips about how he would vote, because he considered it an "improper request" as the
2013 Justice and Security Act explicitly removed the Prime Minister's right to choose the committee chair: "At no earlier stage did I give any undertaking to vote for any particular candidate". the government took no further action against him and restored the Conservative Party whip to him unconditionally on 30 December 2020. ==Military writings and honorary academic posts==