Sam Gyimah | |||||||||||||||||
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 Official portrait, 2017 | |||||||||||||||||
| Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation | |||||||||||||||||
| In office 9 January 2018 – 30 November 2018 | |||||||||||||||||
| Prime Minister | Theresa May | ||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Jo Johnson | ||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Chris Skidmore | ||||||||||||||||
| Minister of State for Prisons | |||||||||||||||||
| In office 17 July 2016 – 9 January 2018 | |||||||||||||||||
| Prime Minister | Theresa May | ||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Andrew Selous | ||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Rory Stewart | ||||||||||||||||
| Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Childcare and Education | |||||||||||||||||
| In office 21 July 2014 – 17 July 2016 | |||||||||||||||||
| Prime Minister | David Cameron | ||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Liz Truss | ||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Caroline Dinenage | ||||||||||||||||
| Parliamentary Secretary for the Constitution | |||||||||||||||||
| In office 14 July 2014 – 12 May 2015 | |||||||||||||||||
| Prime Minister | David Cameron | ||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Greg Clark | ||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | John Penrose | ||||||||||||||||
| Lord Commissioner of the Treasury | |||||||||||||||||
| In office 7 October 2013 – 14 July 2014 | |||||||||||||||||
| Prime Minister | David Cameron | ||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Desmond Swayne | ||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Harriett Baldwin | ||||||||||||||||
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| Member of Parliament forEast Surrey | |||||||||||||||||
| In office 6 May 2010 – 6 November 2019 | |||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Peter Ainsworth | ||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Claire Coutinho | ||||||||||||||||
| Personal details | |||||||||||||||||
| Born | Samuel Phillip Gyimah (1976-08-10)10 August 1976 (age 48) Beaconsfield,Buckinghamshire, England | ||||||||||||||||
| Political party | Liberal Democrats (2019–present) | ||||||||||||||||
| Other political affiliations | Conservative (1999–2019) | ||||||||||||||||
| Spouse | |||||||||||||||||
| Children | 2 | ||||||||||||||||
| Alma mater | Somerville College, Oxford | ||||||||||||||||
| Website | www | ||||||||||||||||
Samuel Phillip Gyimah (/ˈdʒiːmɑː/; born 10 August 1976)[1] is a British politician and banker who served as theMember of Parliament (MP) forEast Surrey from2010 to2019.[2] First elected as aConservative, Gyimah rebelled against the government to block ano-deal Brexit and had the Conservativewhip removed in September 2019. He subsequently joined theLiberal Democrats and stood unsuccessfully for them inKensington at the 2019 general election. Gyimah now serves on the board of Goldman Sachs International.
Between 2014 and 2018, after serving asParliamentary Private Secretary to the Prime Minister,David Cameron, and as a governmentwhip, Gyimah was promoted toParliamentary Under-Secretary of State.[3][4][5] He served as theMinister forUniversities, Science, Research and Innovation from January 2018 until he resigned on 30 November 2018 in protest atTheresa May'sBrexit withdrawal agreement.[6]
Gyimah was born on 10 August 1976 inBeaconsfield,Buckinghamshire.[7] His father Samuel was aGP, and his mother Comfort Mainoo was a midwife.[8] When he was six years old, his parents split up and his mother returned to her native Ghana with Gyimah and his younger brother and sister while his father remained in the UK. For the next ten years, Gyimah attendedAchimota School inAccra, Ghana. Gyimah returned to the UK to sitGCSEs andA-levels atFreman College, a state school inBuntingford,Hertfordshire.[9] He then went on toSomerville College at theUniversity of Oxford, where he readPolitics, philosophy and economics, and was elected President of theOxford Union in 1997.[8]
On graduation, Gyimah joinedGoldman Sachs as aninvestment banker, leaving the company in 2003 to set up Clearstone Training and Recruitment Limited with fellow future Conservative MPChris Philp. Gyimah was voted CBI Entrepreneur of the Future 2005.[10] Clearstone and its subsidiaries went into administration in 2007, owing nearly £4 million.[11] In September 2005 Gyimah edited a report by theBow Group, a Conservativethink tank, entitledFrom the Ashes: the future of the Conservative Party.[12] He was subsequently elected chairman of the Bow Group from 2006 to 2007.[1][13] Gyimah stood unsuccessfully for election inKilburn ward in the2006 Camden Council election.[14] In December 2009, Gyimah placed third in theGosport primary election to succeedPeter Viggers, losing toCaroline Dinenage.[15]
Following his name being added to theConservatives' A-List, he was selected as theprospective parliamentary candidate for East Surrey and elected at the2010 general election,[2] making hismaiden speech on 29 July 2010.[16] Gyimah became a member of the International Development Select Committee, and stated an interest in harnessing the private sector towards achieving international development goals.[17] He also began to take an active part in debates on education and employment and in some local campaigns to protect thegreen belt in Surrey.[17]
In 2011, Gyimah produced a report with the think-tankNESTA, "Beyond the Banks: the case for a British Industry and Enterprise Bond",[18] in support of non-bank alternatives for businesses seeking finance. He was the first member of parliament to call for credit-easing as a means of accelerating Britain's economic recovery.[19]
Gyimah was appointed as Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the Prime Minister at the 2012 reshuffle, then became a Government Whip in October 2013,[2] supporting the Prime Minister during theCameron–Clegg coalition. He supported the United Kingdom remaining in theEuropean Union in theEU referendum of 2016.[20]
Gyimah was Childcare and Education Minister during the progress of the 2015–2016 Childcare Bill, designed to deliver 30 hours per week of funded childcare for working parents of 3 and 4 year olds. The Childcare Bill also required local authorities to publish information about local childcare availability for parents and caregivers. The bill became law as the Childcare Act on 16 March 2016.[21]
On 20 November 2015, Gyimah contributed to thefilibustering of the opposition-proposed Compulsory Emergency First Aid Education (State-Funded Secondary Schools) Bill to make the teaching of first aid in secondary schools compulsory. He spoke until the end of the debate, despite requests from the deputy speaker. Gyimah was quoted as being concerned to not overload the National Curriculum.[22]
On 4 July 2016, as Childcare and Education Minister, Gyimah launched Millie's Mark, a voluntary quality mark described as "the new gold standard" for nursery providers that trained all their staff in pediatric first aid.[23][24]
On 21 October 2016, Gyimah filibustered theSexual Offences (Pardons) bill (nicknamed the "Turing Bill" afterAlan Turing), a private member's bill presented by theScottish National Party MPJohn Nicolson that sought to pardon all men convicted of abolished offences under thesodomy laws, on the grounds that granting automatic pardons to all men convicted of historic 'gay sex crimes' would mean that some men who had raped and/or had sex with young men under the age of 16 would be pardoned.[25] Supporters of the bill disputed this, as they proposed conditions for a pardon which included the act being consensual and that it would not be contrary to present-day British law.[26][27][28] He instead supported an amendment proposed by the government to existing legislation, in which only dead men convicted of such offences were automatically pardoned, while those who were living would have to apply to the Home Office through a "disregard" process[28][29] whereby the Secretary of State must be satisfied that the conduct is no longer criminal. The "Turing Bill" became law on 31 January 2017.[30]
Other than the aforementioned Turing Law, Gyimah has consistently voted in favour ofLGBT equality, including the right of same-sex couples to marry in all of the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland.[31]
As Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, Gyimah toured university campuses around the country for question-and-answer-sessions with students, staff and the public.[32] He called on Higher Education leaders to prioritize student mental health, and spoke of his own financial struggles as an undergraduate.[33][32] Gyimah has warned that "there's a culture of censorship in some of our universities" and that threats to freedom of speech were not "some right-wing conspiracy theory that had been made up". Some of the examples he has mentioned included a professor at King's College London who was allegedly reported for hate speech after teaching a history class, and a university's safe-space policy that took twenty minutes to read. In both cases, the universities in question reported that these things did not happen, and the Department for Education clarified later that Gyimah had merely relayed students' anecdotes.[34]
On 30 November 2018, Gyimah became the seventh government minister to resign overTheresa May'sBrexit deal, which he called naive, saying: "Britain will end up worse off, transformed from rule makers into rule takers. It is a democratic deficit and a loss of sovereignty". He called May's withdrawal agreement "a deal in name only" with many unresolved issues that would leave the UK at the mercy of the European Union with no leverage for many years to come.
He said the UK's weakness in the negotiations over theGalileo satellite navigation project was the final straw and he intended to vote against May's deal in the House of Commons on 11 December 2018, and suggested the public should have the right to a final say on the withdrawal agreement in another referendum with theArticle 50 process extended.[35] Gyimah resigned as a minister because he wanted to be free to endorse a second referendum onBrexit.[36] In early 2019, he co-founded the groupRight to Vote.[37]
On 2 June 2019, Gyimah announced his intention to stand as a candidate for theConservative Party leadership election. He was the only leadership candidate advocating asecond referendum.[38] He withdrew on 10 June, the day that candidatures were to be formalised.
On 3 September 2019, Gyimah joined twenty other rebel Conservative MPs to vote against the Conservative government of Boris Johnson.[39] The rebel MPs voted with the Opposition against a Conservative motion which subsequently failed. Effectively, they helped block Johnson's "no deal" Brexit plan from proceeding on 31 October.[40] Subsequently, all 21 were advised that they had lost theConservative whip,[41] expelling them as Conservative MPs, requiring them to sit as independents.[42][43][44] Before the vote Gyimah had described Johnson's position as: "For MPs like myself, Downing Street has framed the choice as: speak your mind or keep your job."[45] If they decided to run for re-election in a future election, the Party would block their selection as Conservative candidates.[40][45]
On 14 September, he joined theLiberal Democrats[46] and was appointed their Shadow Secretary for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy the following month.[47] In December at the2019 general election, he stood for the Liberal Democrats inKensington,[48] finishing third with 21% of the vote.[49]
In August 2020, Gyimah joined the board ofOxford University Innovation, a technology transfer and consultancy company created to manage the research and development of University spin-offs.[50]
In September 2020, he presented a programme about the future of higher education in Britain onBBC Radio 4.[51]
In October 2020, Sam Gyimah re-joined Goldman Sachs where he started his career, as a non-executive director of Goldman Sachs International and Goldman Sachs International Bank.
In 2012, Gyimah married Nicky Black, with whom he has a son and a daughter. They knew each other at Oxford, where she was also an Oxford Union president, before they reconnected after university. She is a Hong Kong-raised New Zealander.[7][8] Black previously worked for mining companyDe Beers, as well as a former director for social and economic development at theInternational Council on Mining and Metals.[52]
Gyimah has been a volunteer and fundraiser forCrisis, theDown's Syndrome Association and St. Catherine's Hospice in Surrey. He has served as school governor of an inner London school, on the board of a housing association and on the development board ofSomerville College. He is a Vice-President of the Young Epilepsy charity (formerly the National Centre for Young People with Epilepsy) inLingfield, Surrey.[1]
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
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| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forEast Surrey 2010–2019 | Succeeded by |
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