Football referee who blew the whistle on a career in Brexit

Chris Heatonharris was perhaps the most qualified of the ministers in the Exiting the European Union department with a long history of Euroscepticism.

He entered the Commons in 2010 as MP for Daventry, with a majority of more than 19,000.

He was immediately appointed chairman of the European Research Group – which then worked with other anti-eu groups – and held the position until 2016 when he joined the Government.

Mr Heatonharris was appointed to the whips’ office in July 2016, days after Theresa May became Prime Minister in the wake of the Brexit referendum.

His time as a whip – who are required to avoid having a public profile

– was enlivened by his decision in 2017 to send a letter to universities asking them for details of what they were teaching about Brexit to their students for a book he was researching.

Jo Johnson, then the universities minister, said the letter “should probably not have been sent”. Mr Heatonharris joined the Brexit department as a minister in July last year, after a number

of ministers quit over Mrs May’s deal.

As “no-deal minister”, he repeatedly insisted that Britain had made good preparations to leave the EU without a deal.

Before entering the Commons, he was elected in 1999 to the European Parliament as MEP for East Midlands, becoming the Tory party’s chief whip in the European Parliament from 2001 to 2004. He sat on the internal market committee, responsible for coordinating legislation for the internal market and the customs union. He won a reputation for fighting fraud in the EU.

Mr Heatonharris started his working life at his family’s fruit business at New Covent Garden market after attending state school in Kingston upon Thames. He is married with two children and is a qualified football referee.