Lia Nici-Townend[1][2] (born 1 August 1969)[3] is a British Conservative Party politician. She was Member of Parliament (MP) for Great Grimsby since the 2019 general election before losing her seat in 2024.[4] She served as an Assistant Government Whip in the Truss government from September to October 2022.[5][6]
Lia Nici | |
|---|---|
 Official portrait, 2019 | |
| Assistant Government Whip | |
| In office 20 September 2022 – 27 October 2022 | |
| Prime Minister | Liz Truss |
| Preceded by | Alex Chalk |
| Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, The Union and Constitution | |
| In office 8 July 2022 – 20 September 2022 | |
| Prime Minister | Boris Johnson |
| Preceded by | Neil O'Brien |
| Succeeded by | Dehenna Davison |
| Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Prime Minister | |
| In office 8 February 2022 – 8 July 2022 | |
| Prime Minister | Boris Johnson |
| Preceded by | Andrew Griffith Sarah Dines |
| Succeeded by | Alexander Stafford |
| Member of Parliament for Great Grimsby | |
| In office 12 December 2019 – 30 May 2024 | |
| Preceded by | Melanie Onn |
| Succeeded by | Melanie Onn |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1 August 1969 Grimsby, Lincolnshire, England |
| Political party | Conservative |
| Website | lianici |
Early life
editHer father Romualdo Nici, from Pisa in Italy, ran an Italian restaurant in Cleethorpes.[7][8][9][10] Her mother was a policewoman in the Grimsby area and later a social worker.[11][12]
Nici attended Healing School and entered sixth form. She took an art foundation course at Grimsby College, later taking an HND in Audio Visual Studies at Northbrook College in Worthing, East Sussex from 1989 to 1991.[citation needed]
Early career
editNici was a college lecturer for 20 years,[13] including in the media studies department at what is now the Grimsby Institute, a further education college. She was head of East Coast Media at the institute from 2004.
She was the executive producer of Estuary TV, a Grimsby-based community interest company (CIC), from 2013 until the company was dissolved.[14] Following its dissolution, she continued to act as CEO of Estuary TV (now a department of the institute, who had owned and dissolved the CIC). Nici has listed herself as having been self-employed since September 2018.[14]
Political career
editNici voted for the UK to remain in the EU in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum.[15] She subsequently became a supporter of leaving the EU and supported her party's approach to the exit process.[16] In December 2019, she stated that the reason the UK had not left the EU was "a failure of people who live in northern towns like Grimsby who have Labour MPs who have consistently voted against the democratic vote in their constituencies."[17]
Elections
editAfter failing to be selected as parliamentary candidate in Great Grimsby[18] and Scunthorpe,[2] Nici stood as the Conservative candidate for the safe Labour seat of Kingston upon Hull North in 2017, losing to sitting Labour MP Diana Johnson by 14,322 votes.[19]
In May 2018, Nici was elected as a councillor for the Scartho ward of North East Lincolnshire Council.[13] In August 2019, she was selected as the Conservative candidate for Great Grimsby for the 2019 snap general election.[20] She won the seat with 54.9% of the vote and a margin of 7,331 votes over Labour, who had held the seat for 74 years; defeating the sitting Labour MP Melanie Onn, who had represented Great Grimsby since Austin Mitchell's retirement in 2015.[4]
In the 2024 General Election, held in July 2024, Nici lost her seat in the Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes[21] constituency as voters opted to return to a Labour MP under Melanie Onn once again; losing by 7,067 votes and ultimately finishing third behind Reform UK whose candidate received 10,533 votes.
Parliamentary career
editIn March 2020, Nici became a member of the Backbench Business Committee in the House of Commons.[22]
In May 2020, Nici supported Prime Minister Boris Johnson's refusal to take action against his chief adviser Dominic Cummings after the latter breached COVID-19 lockdown regulations, maintaining only that it was possible "he may have committed a minor breach", and should have apologised.[23]
In August 2020, Nici was one of 25 Conservative MPs and peers to sign a letter to Home Secretary Priti Patel urging "stronger enforcement" against people crossing the English Channel in small boats, considering it to be "strikingly clear that, rather than a 'hostile environment', invading migrants have been welcomed".[24][failed verification]
In October 2020, Nici was appointed a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, making her part of the payroll vote.[citation needed] Later that month, however, after being absent from voting on a Labour motion calling for the extension of free school meals into the school holidays, Nici said that she would have voted against the government had she been present.[25]
During the United Kingdom's second national lockdown in November 2020, Nici self-isolated after attending a meeting in 10 Downing Street with the prime minister and several other Conservative MPs including Lee Anderson, who subsequently tested positive for COVID-19.[26]
In March 2021, Nici used Twitter to suggest that people who "are not proud to be British, or of our flag or Queen [...] should move to another country".[27] Following criticism, she refused to apologise for her comments, saying that "the flag and the Queen are big parts of life in this country, so if you dislike it, you can happily move elsewhere".[28]
In a September 2021 interview with YouTuber Mahyar Tousi, Nici expressed her belief that "there are some very sinister, extreme left-wing things going on in our country and they're trying to lobby government and companies".[29]
In December 2021, amid the Westminster lockdown parties controversy, Nici maintained that Johnson's moral authority had not been lost,[30] and expressed her displeasure with whistleblowers who had brought attention to the matter, declaring that they "should be ashamed".[31] Following Johnson's subsequent admission that he had attended a Downing Street garden party during the United Kingdom's first national lockdown, Nici defended him, stating that "nobody is perfect. The prime minister is a good man who wants to do the right thing for the UK and Grimsby."[32] The following day, she asserted her belief that both the party and the leaks surrounding it were part of a plot against the prime minister by civil servants who did not want the United Kingdom to leave the EU.[33]
In February 2022, Nici defended Johnson after his false claim that Keir Starmer was responsible for the failure of the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute Jimmy Savile, alleging that the purported link between the two was "the number one issue for local people on social media" in the week before Johnson raised it in his response to the Sue Gray investigation into lockdown parties within government.[34] The following week, Nici was appointed as a parliamentary private secretary to the prime minister.[35]
In the 2022 vote of confidence in the Conservative Party leadership of Boris Johnson, Nici voted in favour of the Prime Minister. She later continued to openly support Johnson in the subsequent weeks up to his eventual resignation of the Conservative Party on 7 July. The day after Johnson's resignation, she was appointed as a parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Department for Levelling Up in his lame duck government, pending the election of a new Conservative leader.[36] On 10 July she repeated on the BBC allegations that Labour MP Angela Rayner crossed and uncrossed her legs to distract male MPs, an allegation originally made by an unnamed Conservative politician to the Mail on Sunday newspaper in April 2022. At the time Boris Johnson described the story about Rayner as "the most appalling load of sexist, misogynist tripe".[37] On 19 June 2023, Nici abstained in the Commons vote to approve the Privileges Committee's report, which had found that Boris Johnson misled the House.
References
edit- ^ "Members Sworn - Hansard". UK Parliament. 18 December 2019. Retrieved 28 January 2020.
- ^ a b Wallace, Mark (3 May 2017). "Exclusive: Shortlists for Scunthorpe and Birmingham Selly Oak selections tonight". ConservativeHome. Retrieved 13 December 2019.
- ^ Brunskill, Ian (19 March 2020). The Times guide to the House of Commons 2019 : the definitive record of Britain's historic 2019 General Election. HarperCollins Publishers Limited. p. 212. ISBN 978-0-00-839258-1. OCLC 1129682574.
- ^ a b "Great Grimsby parliamentary constituency – Election 2019". BBC News. Retrieved 13 December 2019.
- ^ "Ministerial Appointments: September 2022". GOV.UK. Retrieved 21 September 2022.
- ^ "Lia Nici MP". GOV.UK. Retrieved 29 October 2022.
- ^ Grimsby Evening Telegraph Monday 27 May 1968, page 9
- ^ Grimsby Evening Telegraph Wednesday 18 May 1977, page 4
- ^ Grimsby Evening Telegraph Tuesday 1 February 1972, page 5
- ^ Grimsby Evening Telegraph Monday 17 January 1983, page 2
- ^ Background
- ^ Grimsby Evening Telegraph Saturday 17 June 1967, page 4
- ^ a b Elliott, David (13 December 2019). "Who is Grimsby's new Conservative MP Lia Nici?". Grimsby Live. Retrieved 15 December 2019.
- ^ a b "Lia Nici". LinkedIn. Retrieved 15 December 2019.
- ^ Lynch, Connor (15 March 2019). "This is what happened when The People's Vote came to meet in Grimsby". Grimsby Live. Retrieved 24 June 2020.
- ^ Rogers, Alexandra (5 December 2019). "Great Grimsby general election candidate interviews: The Conservatives' Lia Nici". Grimsby Live. Retrieved 24 June 2020.
- ^ Rogers, Alexandra (4 December 2019). "Conservative election candidate Lia Nici says people in 'northern towns like Grimsby' to blame for Brexit failures". Grimsby Live. Retrieved 24 June 2020.
- ^ Wallace, Mark (23 April 2017). "Exclusive: First Conservative candidate shortlists revealed". ConservativeHome. Retrieved 24 June 2020.
- ^ "2017 General Election – Kingston upon Hull North constituency". Who Can I Vote For?. 8 June 2017. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
- ^ Craig, Peter (19 August 2019). "Conservative Party selects Scartho councillor to contest Grimsby seat at next General Election". Grimsby Live. Retrieved 15 December 2019.
- ^ "Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes - General election results 2024". BBC News. Retrieved 5 July 2024.
- ^ "Voting Record — Lia Nici MP, Great Grimsby (25865)". The Public Whip. 24 June 2020. Retrieved 24 June 2020.
- ^ "Statement on Dominic Cummings". Lia Nici. 29 May 2020. Retrieved 24 June 2020.
- ^ "Immigration minister heads to Paris amid Tory pressure over migrant crossings". PoliticsHome. 11 August 2020. Retrieved 15 August 2020.
- ^ "Free School Meals". Lia Nici. 23 October 2020. Retrieved 16 November 2020.
- ^ Nici, Lia [@lia_nici] (16 November 2020). "I have been contacted by NHS Test and Trace following a work meeting last week with Lee Anderson MP and the Prime Minister. As a result I will be self-isolating in line with the rules. I currently have no symptoms and will be working from home" (Tweet). Retrieved 14 February 2022 – via Twitter.
- ^ Nici, Lia [@lia_nici] (18 March 2021). "Of course if people are not proud to be British, or of our flag or Queen, they don't have to live in the U.K. Perhaps they should move to another country they prefer?" (Tweet). Retrieved 14 February 2022 – via Twitter.
- ^ Bedford, Corey (19 March 2021). "Lia Nici called 'racist' after love our flag or 'move to another country' Twitter storm". Grimsby Live. Retrieved 19 March 2021.
- ^ Tousi, Mahyar [@MahyarTousi] (21 September 2021). "Tory MP Lia Nici warns about the Woke Left lobbying the government: "I think journalists like you Mahyar should start looking into what's happening because there are some very sinister extreme left wing things going on in our country and they're trying to lobby the government."" (Tweet). Retrieved 14 February 2022 – via Twitter.
- ^ Green, Luke (9 December 2021). "Grimsby MP: 'Boris Johnson has not lost moral authority over alleged Christmas party'". Grimsby Live. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
- ^ Allegretti, Aubrey [@breeallegretti] (8 December 2021). "Still some Tory MPs defending No 10: Lia Nici says: "Sadly there are some very, very negative people that clearly are in No 10 just to cause upset and leaks." She says the whistleblower "should be ashamed" they've released the footage now instead of reporting it at the time" (Tweet). Retrieved 14 February 2022 – via Twitter.
- ^ Waller, Jamie (12 January 2022). "'Nobody's perfect' – Lia Nici stands by Boris Johnson". Grimsby Live. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
- ^ Brumby, Lewis (13 January 2022). "Lia Nici says 'PM did nothing wrong' and labels leaking 'a stitch up'". Gi Media. Retrieved 13 January 2022.
- ^ Waller, Jamie (3 February 2022). "Lia Nici claims Jimmy Savile is Grimsby voters' top issue in Radio 5 Live interview". Grimsby Live. Retrieved 23 February 2022.
- ^ Jackson, Matt (8 February 2022). "Lia Nici appointed Boris Johnson's Parliamentary Private Secretary after hailing PM as 'best' ever". Grimsby Live. Retrieved 23 February 2022.
- ^ Tory MP ‘who asked alleged Pincher victim if he was gay’ made a minister. Kent Online. 8 July 2022. Retrieved 8 July 2022.
- ^ "New minister Lia Nici repeats Angela Rayner legs slur". BBC News. 10 July 2022. Retrieved 10 July 2022.