In December 1999 Field was selected to contest the safe Conservative seat of the
Cities of London and Westminster following the retirement of former
Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Brooke at the
2001 general election. Field won the seat with a majority of 4,499 and was returned to Parliament with an increased majority three times since (
2005 – 8,095;
2010 – 11,076;
2015 – 9,671). He was re-elected with a reduced majority at the
2017 general election. Field made his
maiden speech in the House of Commons on 27 June 2001, when he declared his great political hero to be former
Prime Minister Bonar Law. He was described by
The Guardian as one of the most "hardline right-wingers" up for election in 2001 after comments he made in 1991 about charities fighting the
AIDS epidemic were reported. Field criticised AIDS campaigns as a waste of taxpayers' money and wanted mandatory tests for AIDS: "Many charitable trusts set up to help counter Aids in the mid-1980s became little more than a
gay rights front", he wrote in
Crossbow in 1991. As a parliamentarian Field, however, proved a strong supporter of equal rights. Within months of his election, in October 2001, he was one of four Tory MPs supporting a 10-minute rule bill on civil partnerships, a course he continued to support until it was on the statute books. He was also one of the Conservative MPs to vote in favour of gay marriage when this became law in May 2013. He was appointed an
Opposition Whip by
Iain Duncan Smith in 2003, He takes a special interest in
economic affairs,
financial services,
foreign trade and
international development and is chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Venture Capital & Private Equity as well as vice-chairman of the
Groups on
Football and
Bangladesh. He previously served as chairman of the APPGs for
Azerbaijan and
Business Services. He has served on the Standing Committees of several pieces of legislation, including the
Business Rates Supplements Act and the
Finance Acts in 2008 and 2009. As a
backbencher, Field introduced several high-profile debates on issues of local and national importance such as
homelessness,
Northern Ireland,
Government debt,
Heathrow airport,
policing in London,
social housing,
home education and
population estimates. He has run local campaigns on business rates,
St Bartholomew's Hospital, assisting the
creative industries, the control of
rickshaws in the
West End, social housing rent rises, the independence of the
City of London Police (including its
fraud detection expertise) and, in July 2011, successfully argued in Parliament for the
Department of Culture, Media and Sport's continuing control of the
Royal Parks. Field expressed criticism of the previous system governing
MPs' second home allowances:
The Daily Telegraphs investigation of MPs' expenses found Field to be among the lower-end claimants. He has been a supporter of looser rules on MPs' outside earnings and was quoted in 2001 as saying: "If you're earning several hundred thousand a year in the City, are you going to give it up for £47,000 a year in the Commons?" In October 2011, Field voiced opposition to
Occupy London protestors camped in his
constituency. He expressed concern that their "tent city" was turning into a "semi-permanent encampment" which was disrupting
St Paul's Cathedral, a "key iconic tourist site" and
place of worship. He suggested that
police should clear the camp at night and later said: "While no one expects anti-capitalism to be a 24-hour activity, I would have hoped the protesters would show a little more respect for the sanctity of St Paul's." On 28 February 2012, after 137 days of occupation, Field's initial recommendation became reality following a
Court order when the site was cleared by the
City of London Police in just 137 minutes. In March 2014, he launched Conservatives for Managed Migration in order to spark a "calm and rational debate about
migration both within and beyond the Conservative Party" before the
2015 General Election. Field asserted that the
Coalition Government's pledge to get "annual net migration down to the tens of thousands" was undeliverable, risked potential harm to the economy and could ultimately be electorally damaging to the Conservative Party. In March 2015, Field was sworn into the
Privy Council, thereafter being accorded the
honorific prefix of "
The Right Honourable". In July 2015, Field was appointed vice chairman (International) of the Conservative Party under the leadership of David Cameron and was reappointed to the role by Theresa May. The role involves chairing the Party's International and Outreach Office which builds relationships with international sister parties on the centre-right, works with the
Westminster Foundation for Democracy to enhance democratic institutions and political party structures in the developing world, acts as a link between the Party and its MEP group through work with the
Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe (ACRE), and engages in political outreach work with diaspora communities in the UK. In 2016, he met
Halbe Zijlstra, Leader of the Dutch
People's Party for Freedom and Democracy in the
House of Representatives, who had made a series of controversial comments about immigrants and political correctness. It was argued that Field's role as vice chairman of the Conservative Party also includes liaising with sister centre-right parties in Europe.
Minister for Asia and Pacific On 13 June 2017, he was appointed a
Minister of State at the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office. At the FCO his formal responsibilities included: Asia, Australasia/Pacific, Communications (public diplomacy and scholarship),
British Council, Economic Diplomacy (including international energy strategy; climate change;
OECD relationship; fintech/cyber and the illegal wildlife trade), FCO Services Overseas and the Prosperity Fund (as FCO representative on the Ministerial board). His work on climate change has included representing the UK government at December 2018's
COP24 UN Climate Change Conference in Katowice, Poland as well as the
San Francisco Climate Summit and
PIF in Nauru earlier that year. He promoted UK expertise across Asia in green finance, renewables, carbon capture utilisation and storage, and electric vehicle technology.
Assault allegation On 20 June 2019,
Greenpeace accused Field of assault, after an activist who interrupted
Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond's
Mansion House Speech was grabbed by the neck, pinned against a wall and then pushed out of the event by Field. Field said he reacted "instinctively" and referred himself to the Cabinet Office for an investigation. He apologised to the activist for "grabbing her" and said he was worried she might have been armed. As a result of the incident, he was suspended as a minister on 21 June, while investigations took place. The
City of London Police reviewed the events and declared that it would be taking no further action. When Boris Johnson became prime minister in July 2019, Field was dropped from his ministerial role at the Foreign Office as part of a cabinet reshuffle. The Whitehall investigation was closed, as he felt that it was a "matter for the previous PM concerning his conduct during his time as a minister under her appointment". In October 2019, he announced that he would stand down from Parliament at the next general election, citing disagreement with government policy over
Brexit. A Cabinet Office investigation into the assault allegation, published in December 2019, concluded that he had breached the ministerial code but that he would not receive any sanction as Field was no longer in Parliament. ==Writer and commentator==