Sir Philip Andrew Davies (born 5 January 1972) is a British politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Shipley in West Yorkshire from 2005 to 2024. He is a member of the Conservative Party.
Davies voted against the Conservative Party whip over 250 times in the course of his parliamentary career. He was criticised for filibustering parliamentary bills not supported by the government and "killing off legislation he doesn't like".
Davies has been an advocate for the abolition of tuition fees and is a campaigner for the men's rights movement and is known for campaigns against political correctness and feminism. He played a lead role in securing the first International Men's Day debate in Parliament in 2015, which now takes place annually.
He is also an organiser for the TaxPayers' Alliance. Davies has regularly been criticised by other politicians and prominent public figures for comments he has made on gender equality and women, homosexuality, ethnic minorities, as well as people with disabilities. He has stated that people with disabilities should have the option of working for less than the minimum wage. Davies has said that white, male ministers risk being "hoofed out" of the government to make way for women or minority ethnic MPs.
Early life and education Davies was born in Doncaster; his father is Peter Davies, a former elected Mayor of Doncaster. He was educated at the state-sector boarding school, Old Swinford Hospital School in Stourbridge, before studying at Huddersfield Polytechnic (which became Huddersfield University in his third year), where he was awarded a 2:1 BA Hons degree in history and political studies in 1993. Originally he wanted to be a journalist, but in a January 2017 Spectator interview he said, "It was my ambition in life but I just realised I was too shy. You've got to have a confidence that I think I probably never had".
Following his graduation, Davies worked at supermarket business Asda from September 1993 to May 2005, first as a customer services manager and later as a marketing manager. He has also worked at Marilyn Davies Bookmakers and Mark Jarvis Bookmakers.
Parliamentary career At the 2001 general election, Davies unsuccessfully contested Colne Valley as the Conservative candidate, where he came second with 30.5% of the vote behind the incumbent Labour MP Kali Mountford.
At the 2005 general election Davies was elected as MP for Shipley, winning the seat with 39% of the vote and a majority of 422. He received donations toward his successful campaign from Bearwood Corporate Services, a company set up by non-domicile Lord Ashcroft to give out donations to marginal seats such as Davies'.
Davies made his maiden speech on 7 June 2005. He recalled Titus Salt and then mentioned the UNESCO World Heritage Site in Saltaire. He also announced that he wanted to remain a backbencher and not to be a shadow spokesman or a minister, and that he wanted to feel able to speak for his constituents.
At the 2010 general election, Davies was re-elected as MP for Shipley with an increased vote share of 48.6% and an increased majority of 9,944. He was re-elected onto the executive committee of the 1922 Committee of backbench Conservative MPs after the general election and became a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. He also became a member of the newly established backbench business committee and a member of the Speaker's Panel, chairing Westminster Hall debates.
In November 2012, Davies wrote to the Metropolitan Police requesting it to open a second investigation into ex-Labour MP Denis MacShane's expenses claims.
At the 2015 general election, Davies was again re-elected, with an increased vote share of 50% and a decreased majority of 9,624. He was again re-elected at the snap 2017 general election, with an increased vote share of 51.3% and a decreased majority of 4,681 votes. At the 2019 general election, Davies was again re-elected, with a decreased vote share of 50.8% and an increased majority of 6.242 votes.
In 2020, Davies became one of four Vice-Chairs of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Whistleblowing. This group has been subject to criticism by some campaigners on whistleblowing law reform.
Davies is rated as one of the Conservatives' most rebellious MPs.
Davies was defeated in the 2024 general election losing to Labour candidate Anna Dixon.
Filibustering Davies has been repeatedly criticised for his use of the filibuster to block legislation, particularly when private members' bills under the Ten Minute Rule are debated. This happens on Fridays, when attendance is often poor because MPs have returned to their home constituencies, leaving these debates particularly susceptible to filibustering. The practice can be stopped if 100 MPs attend Parliament, and Davies has noted that if "not even 100 MPs out of 650 showed up" then it indicated a bill "did not have full support".
When asked by a journalist whether his tactics were underhand, Davies said:
In October 2015, Davies spoke for 93 minutes, thereby successfully blocking a proposed bill that would have given free hospital parking to carers. He had pledged his support for carers four months earlier.
In November 2015, Davies gave the longest speech in a sequence by Conservative MPs that resulted in 'talking out' a bill backed by St. John Ambulance, the British Red Cross, and the British Heart Foundation to provide first-aid training to children. Davies argued that "schools can already teach first aid if they want to. They should make the decision rather than have it forced on them by Whitehall."
Gambling industry In February 2013, Davies was investigated by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards following a complaint claiming he received more than £10,000 in benefits from companies with links to the gambling industry which he did not fully declare in the register of members' interests during a year-long investigation into the betting industry. The commissioner required Davies to apologise for breaching the parliamentary code after not declaring an interest in a debate and at the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, namely £870 of hospitality from the bookmaker Ladbrokes, rather than the larger amount complained about. Davies told Parliament the omission was not "due to a desire to conceal it ... but to an oversight" and he was "very grateful to [the rest of the committee] for accepting that mine had been a genuine error".
In December 2016, Davies was cleared of wrongdoing over claims alleging "extremely favourable" treatment he had received from Ladbrokes – the lifting of restrictions on his betting account. The investigation was dropped on the basis of "insufficient evidence" that Davies had broken the rules and the complainant had refused to drop his anonymity out of a fear of losing his job. Davies defended hospitality and his meetings with the racing industry, stating: "I am the elected chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Betting and Gaming – and a former bookmaker – so of course I meet with bookmakers. It would be rather extraordinary if I didn't".
In November 2018, Tracey Crouch resigned as sports minister since she believed Philip Davies successfully went above her and secured a delay to curbs on fixed odds betting terminals. Davies received hospitality worth £3,204.44 from betting companies and bookmakers including Ladbrokes, William Hill and SkyBet in the year to 2018. In 2020, Davies received total payments of £49,800 from GVC Holdings for providing advice to the global betting company. In June 2021, Davies received hospitality worth £3,687.60, and his wife Esther McVey received £2,287.60, from companies linked to the betting industry.
From June 2021 through to March 2022, Davies received a variety of hospitality gifts from the gambling and horse racing industry worth £11,830.60. Additionally, he received a lifetime free entry badge from Arena Racing Company allowing him free entry to any of their 16 racecourses; the estimated value of this is £1000 per year.
In February 2023, having been entertained at Les Ambassadeurs luxury casino in Mayfair, central London, Davies wrote to the culture secretary Lucy Frazer, urging her to introduce a measure that was subsequently included in the UK Government's 'Gambling Act Review White Paper'.
Election betting In 2024, during the General Election campaign, Davies placed a bet of £8,000 against himself to lose his seat and subsequently became embroiled in the 2024 United Kingdom general election betting scandal. Davies also placed a bet on his wife, Esther McVey, winning and retaining her current seat in Tatton. When asked about the bets, Davies told the Sun newspaper, "What's it got to do with you whether I did or didn't? It's nobody's business."
Political views Davies is on the governing council of The Freedom Association pressure group, and is an organiser for the TaxPayers' Alliance. He has called for government to "scrap the Human Rights Act for foreign nationals and chuck them out of the country" and in 2016, expressed admiration for Donald Trump. Davies was criticised by a Liberal Democrat councillor as being "disgracefully reactionary" for his public comment in 2011 that he wanted to see "an increase in the prison population". Davies believes that prison works and that it reduces the UK crime rate.
In 2009, Davies called for the scrapping of the minimum wage in the UK. In 2014, he called for the abolition of Sunday trading laws.
European Union Davies advocated British withdrawal from the European Union, starting the Better Off Out campaign, and campaigning at the Conservative Party Conference in 2005.
The Eurosceptic UK Independence Party (UKIP) did not field a candidate against Davies at the 2010 general election and campaigned for his re-election after being identified as a "committed eurosceptic". In the event, Davies held his seat with an increased majority of just under 10,000 votes.
Race and ethnic minorities Davies was the parliamentary spokesman for the inactive Campaign Against Political Correctness and was accused of wasting the Equality and Human Rights Commission's time by sending a stream of correspondence to its chair, Trevor Phillips, between 2008 and 2009. In this correspondence, he asked questions relating to race and sex discrimination such as: "Is it offensive to black up or not, particularly if you are impersonating a black person?" and "Why it is so offensive to black up your face, as I have never understood this?" Some commentators suggested that he was advocating 'blacking up'.
Davies also asked whether it was racist for a policeman to refer to a BMW as "black man's wheels" and whether the Metropolitan Black Police Association breaches discrimination law by restricting its membership to black people. Peter Herbert, the chair of the Society of Black Lawyers, said: "This correspondence seems a complete and utter waste of time... he shouldn't be using the Human Rights Commission as basically a source of legal advice".
A complaint from Davies was sent to the Equality and Human Rights Commission in January 2017 that the Jhalak Prize, a literary prize intended to increase the diversity of published authors, was discriminatory towards white writers. After investigating the issue, the EHRC rejected Davies' complaint the following April. A spokesman for the EHRC said the body had decided the prize did not break the Equality Act 2010. "This award is the type of action which the Commission supports and recommends", he said. Davies rejected "positive discrimination" and said he believed in "true equality".
In May 2018, Davies said that police stop and search numbers had reduced dramatically as a result of "politically correct chatter". He said that black people are "more likely to be murderers". Davies said the evidence showed the community much more likely to be stopped and searched and yet found to have done nothing wrong were white people.