Constituency : Eastleigh 2005-12
Chris took over from David Chidgey at Eastleigh, getting home by 568 votes after a fierce campaign from the Tories.
Chris was born in West London.He is the son of a businessman and was educated at Westminster School and Oxford. He edited the Isis magazine and was on the executive of the Labour Club. He started out as a journalist in Liverpool.He went to work in the City and made a fortune with a company that measured the risk rating of various countries for investment. He then became economics editor and columnist for The Guardian. He switched to the SDP in 1981 and stood in Reading East in 1983 coming second. In 1987 he stood in Oxford West and Abingdon displacing the former Labour MP Evan Luard. The Tory victor John Patten described him as "a passing Guardian journalist " but he improved on Luard's showing. In 1999 he became an MEP for South East England. He was very active in financial reform and was re-elected in 2004. It was during his tenure in Europe that he was caught speeding for a fourth time and made the ill-fated decision to ask his wife to take the points.
Chris was made shadow chief secretary to the Treasury and spotted a tax loophole in the 2005 Finance Bill which was subsequently amended. He took the party by surprise in standing for the leadership in 2006 and came a creditable second after an energetic campaign. He became shadow environment spokesman and was a major force behind the party's green tax policies. In 2007 he stood again for the leadership and narrowly lost to Nick Clegg.; a subsequent discovery of uncounted postal votes suggested he might have won but he accepted the result. Clegg made him Home Affairs spokesman. He was criticised for including a trouser press in his expenses claims which were quite low overall. He played Gordon Brown in Nick Clegg's preparations for the TV leaders debates.
Chris increased his majority in 2010 and was part of the negotiating team which led to the coalition government. He became Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. The tabloids then exposed his affair with a bisexual researcher Cara Trimingham and he announced he was leaving his wife Vicky Pryce, an economist with political ambitions of her own. Chris pursued a policy of favouring renewables over nuclear energy which was backed by David Cameron. He clashed with George Osborne over the Conservatives' aggressive campaign for a no vote in the AV referendum.
Pryce retaliated by a suggestion in a magazine interview that someone had taken the speeding points, apparently not realising that this left her open to prosecution. Chris denied the accusation and carried on but the Labour MP Simon Danczuk made a complaint to the police. He made repeated attempts to have the case thrown out. He resigned from the Cabinet in 2012 when it became clear the case would proceed. A year later he resigned his seat having decided to plead guilty. Both he and Pryce were sentenced to 8 months in prison. A barrister friend of Pryce was also jailed for plotting with her to blame an innocent researcher. During her trial she claimed that Chris had previous sexual relationships with men.
Chris was released after 9 weeks with an electronic tag. He became European manager of Zilkha Biomass Energy.
He is now 64.
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