Nick Gibb was first elected as the Conservative MP for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton in 1997, being reelected in 2019 with a majority of 22,503.
The Bognor Regis and Littlehampton constituency is a narrow coastal seat that covers a large part of the coast in west Sussex. It includes the town of Littlehampton, and the seaside resort of Bognor Regis, known for its Butlins Camp, its annual competition where people try to fly as far as they can by jumping off the town’s pier, and the famous ‘Bugger Bognor’ comment by George V. As with many seats on the south coast, this area contains a high number of retired people, and a quarter of the population are said to be of pensionable age. A high 65% of the electorate here backed Brexit in the 2016 EU referendum. This has long been safe territory for the Conservative Party.
Nick Gibb is currently the Minister of State in the Department for Education.
Indeed Mr Gibb has spent the majority of his political career at Westminster on the front bench covering education. He was shadow schools Minister between 2005 and 2010, Schools Minister between 2010 and 2012, and then again between 2014 and 2016. Between 2016 and 2021 he was the Minister for School Standards.
Gibb is well known for his enthusiasm for synthetic phonics as a method of teaching.
Nick Gibb was born in Amersham in 1960. He was educated at Maidstone Grammar School in Kent and then at Durham University. He then joined NatWest as a trainee accountant, before working at the Kibbutz Merom Golam in 1983.
From 1984 he was employed by KPMG as a chartered accountant and worked for the firm for 13 years until his election to parliament.
Gibb supported Michael Gove in the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election. In the past he has written pamphlets for the Adam Smith Institute and is on the free market wing of the party. He supported Remain in the 2016 EU referendum.
In 2022, Gibb was one of the first MPs to call for Boris Johnson to resign after ‘partygate’. Writing in the Daily Telegraph he said that: “We need to face up to hard truths. To restore trust, we need to change the prime minister”.
Gibb is married to Michael Simmonds, his partner of over thirty years. His brother, Robbie Gibb was once the former Communications Chief for Theresa May in Downing Street, and a producer of politics programmes at the BBC.
Email: gibbn@parliament.uk
Website: https://www.nickgibb.org.uk/
Twitter: @NickGibbMP
