61 Facts About Andrew Mitchell

Andrew John Bower Mitchell was born on 23 March 1956 and is a British politician who has been the Member of Parliament for Sutton Coldfield since 2001.

Andrew Mitchell served in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for International Development from 2010 to 2012 and then briefly as Government Chief Whip in the House of Commons until he resigned after an alleged altercation with a police officer, referred to as "Plebgate".

Andrew Mitchell studied History at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he was elected President of the Cambridge Union in 1978.

Andrew Mitchell was elected to the House of Commons for Gedling in Nottinghamshire at the 1987 general election.

Andrew Mitchell served in the second Major government as a Lord Commissioner of the Treasury from 1994 to 1995 and as a junior minister at the Department of Social Security from 1995 to 1997.

Andrew Mitchell lost his seat to the Labour Party's Vernon Coaker at the 1997 general election.

Andrew Mitchell was appointed to the Shadow Cabinet in 2005 as Shadow Secretary of State for International Development.

Amid public pressure due to the Plebgate scandal, Andrew Mitchell resigned from the government the following month, and returned to the backbenches.

In 2022, after serving on the backbenches for a decade, Andrew Mitchell made a return to government as Minister of State for Development and Africa following the appointment of Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister.

Andrew Mitchell was born at Hampstead in north London, the son of Sir David Bower Andrew Mitchell, a future Conservative MP of 33 years, and Government Minister.

Andrew Mitchell was educated at Ashdown House School and Rugby School, where the self-confessed "stern disciplinarian" earned the nickname "Thrasher".

Andrew Mitchell went to the University of Cambridge, where he read History at Jesus College.

Andrew Mitchell was Chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association in the Michaelmas Term of 1977.

Andrew Mitchell worked for Lazard, the investment bank, where he worked with British companies seeking large-scale overseas contracts.

Andrew Mitchell was the only Conservative member of Islington Health Authority in north London during the 1980s, and in that capacity, he called for the IHA to make greater use of competitive tendering in the allocation of service contracts.

Andrew Mitchell lost his Commons seat with Tony Blair's Labour victory at the 1997 election.

Andrew Mitchell was returned to Parliament at the 2001 election as the MP for Sutton Coldfield, near Birmingham.

Andrew Mitchell held no shadow ministerial or organisational position under the leadership of Iain Duncan Smith, but in November 2003, under new leader Michael Howard, he became Shadow Economic Affairs Minister.

In May 2005, Andrew Mitchell was appointed to the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for International Development.

In that role, Andrew Mitchell visited a number of countries in Africa and Asia containing some of the worst poverty in the world, such as Sierra Leone, Ghana, Ethiopia, Chad, Eritrea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Kenya, Thailand, Cambodia and Burma.

Whilst in Burma, Andrew Mitchell challenged its Government by raising evidence of systematic human rights abuses in the country, and its continued imprisonment of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Andrew Mitchell led groups of Conservative volunteers from the professions in social development projects in Rwanda for three consecutive summers, from 2007 to 2009, as part of Project Umubano, and kept a detailed diary of their activities and experiences.

In 2008, Andrew Mitchell himself taught English to over a thousand Rwandan primary school teachers.

The journalist, Lucy Kinder, claimed Andrew Mitchell texted her father, a friend from Andrew Mitchell's university days: "They [his aides] are threatening her with physical violence and I can't say I blame them".

Andrew Mitchell expressed support for the idea of a televised appeal for Gaza on the BBC in 2009, a subject which had aroused much controversy on both sides of the argument.

Andrew Mitchell said that, while the matter was ultimately for the BBC to decide, "We believe that they should allow the broadcast to proceed so that the British public, who have proved themselves so generous during recent emergencies in the Congo and Burma, can make their own judgement on the validity of the appeal".

Andrew Mitchell visited Pakistan during the floods in 2010 and returned the following year.

Andrew Mitchell visited Haiti, to see the effects of the earthquake, and Somalia and Libya in 2011.

Andrew Mitchell addressed the United Nations General Assembly in 2010 to press the case for greater support for the developing world, strongly criticised the developed world for failing in its responsibilities towards it, and announced that Britain would double its aid contribution to Pakistan.

Andrew Mitchell accepted that a smaller aid budget might have meant fewer cuts elsewhere, but insisted that development projects helped protect Britain.

Andrew Mitchell made clear that value for money in aid donations was of critical importance and provided a guarantee that British legislation would be amended to ensure that Britain's aid contributions would be maintained at 0.7 per cent of UK GNI by 2013.

Andrew Mitchell asked former international envoy and Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown to conduct a review of the UK's response to international humanitarian disasters, such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake, to see whether lessons could be learned from them.

Andrew Mitchell's successor stopped further aid payments as Rwanda had breached agreements, and following the publication of a United Nations Security Council investigators' report which provided evidence that Rwanda had supplied guns, money and recruits to the rebels contrary to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1807, and engaged directly in combat to help the rebels capture territory.

On 30 November 2012 the committee published its report criticising Andrew Mitchell for restoring the funding, stating "We do not understand how [Andrew Mitchell] reached the conclusion that support for the M23 had ceased", which was one of the three conditions that the Prime Minister had set for the resumption of aid.

In September 2012, Andrew Mitchell was appointed Government Chief Whip in David Cameron's first significant Cabinet reshuffle.

Andrew Mitchell strongly disputed the police account of the incident in statements to the media, and in an article in The Sunday Times alleged the police officers were involved in a "cynical smear campaign".

Andrew Mitchell launched a civil libel case against UK newspaper The Sun, which had first published reports of the affair.

Andrew Mitchell was countersued by PC Toby Rowland, the officer who had been on duty at the Downing Street gate.

On 27 November 2014, Mr Justice Mitting ruled against Andrew Mitchell, describing his behaviour as childish and saying: "I am satisfied at least on the balance of probabilities that Mr Andrew Mitchell did speak the words alleged or something so close to them as to amount to the same including the politically toxic word pleb".

On 30 January 2015, court papers revealed that News Group newspapers offered a deal on 19 September 2014 which would have allowed Andrew Mitchell to avoid liability for the legal costs incurred by the media organisation up to that date.

However, the offer did not include any apology from the publisher and Andrew Mitchell turned it down.

In 2002, Andrew Mitchell led the successful Keep Justice Local campaign across his constituency of Sutton Coldfield to safeguard the 50-year-old Magistrates' Court from closure.

Andrew Mitchell presented a petition signed by more than 5,500 constituents, protesting at plans to transfer the Courthouse's work to Birmingham.

However, its closure was again announced in December 2010 by the government in which Andrew Mitchell was by then a minister.

In 2013 Andrew Mitchell voted against the legalisation of same-sex marriage and voted for an amendment to the bill which would have allowed a government registrar to opt out of performing marriage ceremonies 'to which he had a conscientious objection'.

Andrew Mitchell was ranked by the Liberal Democrat Voice as one of the least authoritarian members of Parliament, scoring 3 out of 100 points for his votes between 2005 and 2010.

Andrew Mitchell supported continued membership of the European Union in the 2016 referendum.

Andrew Mitchell explained that this was a prospect he regarded with apprehension, and speculated that under a Labour Government borrowing and taxation would increase drastically.

In October 2018, Andrew Mitchell said that by supporting the Saudi coalition "Britain is complicit in creating" a famine in Yemen.

On 31 January 2022, after Boris Johnson issued a statement to the house about the interim report by Sue Gray, into the Partygate scandal, Andrew Mitchell announced that he no longer supported the Prime Minister.

Andrew Mitchell convinced Prime Minister John Major, who was critical of Johnson, not to veto Johnson's candidacy, but Johnson could not find a constituency.

An article in The Sunday Times newspaper on 30 October 2010, quoted by The Guardian newspaper the following day, claimed that Andrew Mitchell had pressured the Foreign Office and colleagues to lobby Ghana for the lifting of a trading ban on a cocoa company, Armajaro, which had been a repeated donor to Andrew Mitchell's parliamentary office and a donor to the Conservative Party.

Andrew Mitchell argued that he had seen no evidence that the Ghanaian government's suspicions about the company in question had been substantiated, and that the claim that he had acted improperly on behalf of a party donor was unreasonable, as the company had ceased to donate to both the Conservative Party and his parliamentary office several years earlier.

In 2006, Andrew Mitchell invested funds in privately owned firms implicated in a tax avoidance scheme.

Andrew Mitchell is married to Dr Sharon Bennett, a GP, and has two children.

Andrew Mitchell maintains a residence in his constituency of Sutton Coldfield and primarily lives in Islington, London.

Andrew Mitchell sits on the Board of Trustees alongside Sebastian Coe, Katherine Grainger and David Davies.

Andrew Mitchell was a senior strategy adviser for consultants Accenture.

Andrew Mitchell is Freeman of the City of London and a Liveryman of the Vintners' Company.

In 2010, Andrew Mitchell was sworn in as a Privy Councillor.

Andrew Mitchell is a member of the elite Burgundian bacchanalian fraternity, the Confrerie des Chevaliers du Tastevin.