Sir David Amess
Well-liked, hard-working and robustly Right-wing Conservative MP for Basildon and Southend West
SIR DAVID AMESS, who has died aged 69 after being stabbed several times by an assailant while holding a constituency surgery, was a campaigning Right-wing Conservative MP for nearly 40 years, first, from 1983, for Basildon and then, from 1997, for Southend West.
Blond in younger years, ebullient, convivial and with an “Estuary English” accent, Amess was once described by Robert Hardman in The Daily Telegraph as “one of parliament’s jesters” and “a man who likes to shout when a whisper would suffice”. An outspoken Eurosceptic of many years standing, who strongly backed Brexit in 2016, the closest he came to ministerial office was as Parliamentary Private Secretary for 10 years to Michael Portillo.
Yet he was an effective and diligent constituency MP, building up a personal following which saw him hold on in difficult circumstances, and as a sponsor of numerous legislative amendments and private members’ bills he probably achieved more than many who acquired ministerial rank.
The most significant of these were the Protection Against Cruel Tethering Act (1988), and the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act (2000). The first reflected Amess’s long-standing concern for animal welfare, in which he incurred the wrath of many fellow Conservatives by consistently voting to ban foxhunting and hare coursing (though he was in favour of capital punishment), and supporting numerous other animal welfare campaigns.
The animal-related Act, supported by the NFU, banned the tethering of “any horse, ass or mule under such conditions or in such manner as to cause that animal unnecessary suffering”.
The second piece of legislation, following on from the death of a constituent from cold, required the Secretary of State to “publish and implement a strategy for reducing fuel poverty”. The measure was credited with pushing fuel poverty to near the top of the political agenda, contributing to a dramatic fall in the problem in England from 5.1 million households in 1996 to 1.2 million in 2004.
David Anthony Andrew Amess was born on March 26 1952 in workingclass Plaistow, East London, to James Amess, an electrician, and Maud, née Martin, a dressmaker. As Amess recalled, “we were very poor and lived in a small terraced house with no bathroom, an outside toilet and a tin bath hanging on the wall”. In 2014 he would compile and publish a pamphlet, Party of Opportunity, containing short biographies of Tory MPS with working-class origins.
David’s mother was a Roman Catholic who brought him up in the faith and he remained a staunch Catholic throughout his life, his commitment reflected in his opposition to abortion and to the broadening of LGBT rights. “Confession,” he once said, “is very important to me.”
He attended St Antony’s Junior School, Forest Gate, where he was “often in classes of 50, and the teachers still gave us excellent tuition and kept order to a high standard”, and St Bonaventure’s Grammar School, Newham, where he remembered being “quite bossy and pushy” and was rumoured to have once hit a fellow pupil over the head with a bicycle pump. Until the age of five, Amess said, he had the nickname of “Double Dutch” on account of a bad stutter: he could not make the sounds “st” or “the” and saw a speech therapist for three years, which also had the effect of virtually eliminating his Cockney accent.
He took a degree in Economics and Government at Bournemouth College of Technology. Then, after 18 months’ teaching at a primary school (“I specialised in teaching children who were described as ESN”), and a short stint as an underwriter, he became a recruitment consultant.
A dedicated Thatcherite, Amess contested the safe Labour seat of Newham North West in 1979, and in 1982 became a councillor in the London borough of Redbridge. When the incumbent Tory MP for Basildon, the Right-wing Harvey Proctor, moved to safer Billericay for the 1983 general election, Amess was chosen to fill his shoes and was duly elected. Three years later he stood down from the council to concentrate on his Westminster seat.
Assiduous and likeable, Amess built a strong personal following by concentrating on constituency issues: the Guardian’s Andrew Rawnsley once suggested that the secret of his electoral success was that “he never completed a sentence without mentioning his constituency”. He retained his seat in 1987, albeit with a reduced majority, after which Michael Portillo appointed him his PPS, a position he retained throughout Portillo’s ministerial career.
Basildon was regarded as a bellwether seat, and when Amess won it again in 1992, albeit with a tiny majority, it provided the first indication that despite the pundits, and the triumphalism of Labour’s leader Neil Kinnock, the Tories were on course for a fourth successive election victory. He would later describe his campaign in a short pamphlet entitled 1992: Against All Odds! (2012).
Boundary changes prior to the 1997 general election meant that Basildon was almost certain to go Labour, so Amess decided to look elsewhere, and in 1995 was selected to fight Southend West after the retirement of Paul Channon. Returned to Westminster again, he held the seat until his death.
Among other achievements in parliament, Amess piloted a bill which closed a loophole that had allowed companies who supply specialist printing equipment to counterfeiters to evade prosecution, and a bill to streamline the re-registration process for driving instructors.
Though he was unsuccessful in his attempt to push through legislation to establish a memorial to Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary, his long campaign for Wallenberg to be given public recognition was crowned with success when a memorial designed by Philip Jackson was installed outside the Western Marble Arch Synagogue and unveiled by the Queen in 1997.
Amess served on the Health Select Committee and chaired the Conservative Party Backbench Committee for Health in 1999. He played an important role in an inquiry into the state of obesity in the UK, which in 2004 found that two-thirds of the population of England were overweight or obese, and made recommendations to combat the problem.
In 2018 he launched an All-party Parliamentary Group on Endometriosis with the aim of raising awareness of the condition. In 2020 it published a report revealing that average diagnosis time was eight years and containing recommendations to the Government on how to improve endometriosis care.
Amess played an active role in parliamentary administration. He also served on the Panel of Chairs, responsible for chairing public bill committees and other General Committees, the Administration Committee and the Backbench Business Committee.
Amess – who was a lifelong supporter of West Ham United, and also followed Basildon United – was knighted in 2015 and received several awards for his contributions in parliament, including the Animal Welfare and Environment Champion award of the 2011 Dods Charity Champion Awards, and the “Outstanding Achievement Award” at the same event the following year, in recognition of his lifetime commitment to charitable work.
On October 15 2021, Amess was stabbed multiple times at his constituency surgery in a Leigh-onsea Methodist church. He was treated at the scene but died from his injuries.
In 1983 he married Julia Arnold, a former underwriter, who survives him with their four daughters and a son.