Timothy Kirkhope

Timothy John Robert Kirkhope ( born April 29, 1945 in Newcastle upon Tyne ) is a British lawyer and politician of the Conservative Party and, since 1999 Member of the European Parliament. Previously, he was a member of the British House of Commons.

Curriculum vitae

Kirkhope studied from 1964 to 1969 Law at the Private University College of Law in Guildford. From 1973 he worked as a lawyer in a private law firm and from 1977 through 1987 as a partner in the law firm Wilkinson, Marshall, Clayton and Gibson.

In 1982 he was elected to the regional parliament of Northumberland and was head of the airport of Newcastle. In the UK general election in 1987, he scored a seat in the House of Commons, where he was from 1990 Deputy Leader of the Conservatives. From 195 he was Parliamentary State Secretary at the Home Office, where he was responsible for immigration, border control and gambling. The electoral defeat of the Conservatives in 1997 but Kirkhope lost his seat in Parliament. From 1997 to 1999 he was therefore again worked as a lawyer.

In the European elections in 1999 Kirkhope won a seat in the European Parliament, where he was Head of the Delegation of the Conservative Party and spokesman for the Christian Democrat and conservative EPP-ED Group in the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. 2002 to 2004 he was a member of the European Convention, which drafted the EU Constitutional Treaty. In 2003 he became head of a working group that drew up proposals for the future of asylum policy of the British Conservative Shadow Home Secretary at the request of the Conservative Party.

After the 2004 European elections Kirkhope was elected to the post of First Deputy Chairmen of EPP -ED Group, which he held for one year. At the same time, he worked again for the British Conservatives on a report on immigration policy. In 2007, he became Head of the UK Delegation back in the EPP -ED Group, took this position but again, after his successor, Giles Chichester, had been involved in an expenses scandal.

After the European election of 2009, the British Conservatives withdrew from the EPP- ED Group and instead joined the newly formed European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), whose interim chairman Kirkhope was. He was initially provided as permanent Chairman, but he gave up this position in favor of Poland Michał Kaminski. This was originally intended as a candidate of the Group for the office of Parliament vice-president, however, was a failure in the choice of the British Conservative Edward McMillan- Scott, who came into office against the will of the group. Kirkhope then sat by the fraction exclusion McMillan- Scott, leaving Kaminski the group's presidency, he assumed the office of a newly created " representative group leaders " a. He is also a member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, the Committee on Petitions and the Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality.