MP & GOVERNMENt WHIP
Gyles Brandreth was Member of Parliament for the City of Chester from 1992 to 1997. He was successively Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, to the Secretary of State for National Heritage and the Secretary of State for Health. He served as a Junior Whip at the Department of the Environment, the Department of Transport and the Department of Health and, later, as a Whip and Lord Commissioner of the Treasury, in the Cabinet Office and the Treasury.
His Private Member’s Bill became the 1994 Marriage Act and is the legislation that enabled civil marriages to take place in venues others than register offices, such as hotels, stately homes and historic houses.
As PPS at the Department of National Heritage, he noticed the vacant plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square and set in motion the scheme that allows it to be used to display original and unusual works of art.