30 Facts About Nick Gibb

1.

Nick Gibb was born in Amersham, Buckinghamshire and was educated at the College of St Hild and St Bede at the University of Durham.

2.

Nick Gibb was Shadow Minister for Schools from 2005 to 2010.

3.

Nick Gibb was appointed as Minister of State for School Standards by Prime Minister David Cameron, serving from May 2010 and September 2012.

4.

Nick Gibb was promoted to his previous role as Minister of State for School Standards after the 2015 general election, replacing his initial successor in the Coalition government, David Laws.

5.

Nick Gibb retained this position during the premiership of Theresa May Nick Gibb was retained as Minister of State for School Standards by May's successor, Boris Johnson; Gibb was removed from the role in September 2021.

6.

Nick Gibb returned to the role under Rishi Sunak in October 2022.

7.

Nick Gibb then attended the College of St Hild and St Bede at the University of Durham where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Law in 1981.

8.

Nick Gibb was a member of the Federation of Conservative Students at a time when they were influenced by radical libertarian ideas.

9.

Nick Gibb stood for election to the NUS committee in 1981, but only achieved a single vote after accusing the NUS of openly supporting terrorist organisations.

10.

In 1982, Nick Gibb joined NatWest as a trainee accountant, before working on Kibbutz Merom Golan in 1983.

11.

Nick Gibb is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants.

12.

Nick Gibb worked as an election agent to Cecil Parkinson at the 1987 general election, and was the secretary of the Bethnal Green and Stepney Conservative Association in 1988, becoming its chairman the following year.

13.

Nick Gibb contested Stoke-on-Trent Central at the 1992 general election but was defeated into second place some 13,420 votes behind the sitting Labour MP Mark Fisher.

14.

In 1994, Nick Gibb was selected to contest the Rotherham by-election, caused by the death of James Boyce.

15.

Nick Gibb finished in third place, 12,263 votes behind the winner Denis MacShane.

16.

Nick Gibb was selected to stand as the Conservative candidate for the newly created West Sussex seat of Bognor Regis and Littlehampton at the 1997 general election.

17.

Nick Gibb won the seat with a majority of 7,321 and has remained the MP there since.

18.

Shortly after his election, Nick Gibb joined the opposition frontbench of William Hague when he was appointed as the spokesman on trade and industry in 1997, before joining the social security select committee later in the year.

19.

Nick Gibb was reportedly involved in the faction-fight between supporters of William Hague and Michael Portillo, the then shadow chancellor, as a supporter of Portillo.

20.

Nick Gibb was briefly a spokesman on environment, transport and the regions following the 2001 general election but resigned under the leadership of Iain Duncan Smith, reportedly because he was unhappy at his new role.

21.

Nick Gibb was sacked in a reshuffle in September 2012, but returned to the same Department, again as a Minister of State, in July 2014.

22.

Nick Gibb was appointed to the Privy Council on 4 November 2016.

23.

Nick Gibb was sacked by the Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the September 2021 reshuffle and returned to the back benches.

24.

On 4 February 2022, Nick Gibb called for the Prime Minister to resign over Partygate.

25.

Nick Gibb is a longstanding advocate of synthetic phonics as a method of teaching children to read, and is a supporter of the motor neurone disease cause, currently being vice-chair of the All Party Motor Neurone Disease Group in parliament.

26.

Just days after being appointed as Minister for Schools in 2010, Nick Gibb was criticised by teachers and educationalists after leaked information suggested he had told officials at the Department of Education that he "would rather have a physics graduate from Oxbridge without a PGCE teaching in a school than a physics graduate from one of the rubbish universities with a PGCE".

27.

Later in 2012 Nick Gibb was reported to have described attempts to include public speaking classes intending to foster empowerment among public students as "encouraging idle chatter in class".

28.

Nick Gibb supported the Remain campaign in the 2016 Brexit referendum.

29.

Nick Gibb is the brother of Robbie Nick Gibb, a former PR consultant and ex-editor of the BBC's political programmes, The Daily Politics and This Week, who was announced as Director of Communications for Prime Minister Theresa May in July 2017.

30.

In May 2015, Nick Gibb came out as gay and announced his engagement to Michael Simmonds, the chief executive of the Populus polling organisation.