About Simon
Simon was elected as the Member of Parliament for Barrow & Furness on 12 December 2019.
Simon’s family have lived in and around Furness since the 1600s, and still do so today. He was born in Preston and has been married to Pippa for many years. They have a daughter and two sons, and he lives near Ulverston.
Simon was Chair of the Barrow and District Credit Union for two years and for nearly a decade worked as a director at a not-for-profit company which prevented fraud and other financial crime, and protected vulnerable people from falling victim to fraud and scams. Prior to this, he worked in telecoms, helped run two charities, and also ran his own communications business for a number of years.
Over 20 years ago, Simon spent a summer interning for an MP and it changed his life. He saw in the constituency surgeries that he supported the huge difference that a single MP can make: fighting the corner of their constituents, making their voices heard, and changing their lives for the better. After establishing a career and gaining experience of how business and the third sector worked, he decided to roll up his sleeves and applied to fight Barrow & Furness.
Simon graduated from the University of Warwick with Honours in English Literature. Since 2009, he has been a member of the British Council's TN2020 network of future leaders. His mother, father and grandfather all worked at BAE.
Simon was the Conservative candidate for Barrow and Furness in 2015. His campaign reduced the Labour majority from over 5,000 to under 800. In June 2016, Simon voted to leave the EU. In 2017, he fought Barrow and Furness again, reducing the majority to 209. In 2019, after wearing down the electorate, he was returned with a majority of over 5,000.
Among his many successful campaigns, in February 2020 Simon co chaired the ‘Save our Surgery’ working group which successfully campaigned to save Askam’s GP Surgery.
In June 2023, Simon was made the Government’s first ever Rural Connectivity Champion.
In July 2023, Simon's Private Members Bill, the Offenders (Day of Release from Detention) Act 2023 became law.
Simon is the Chair of the GSK Taskforce and is working to secure a life sciences business cluster, and a new leisure facility for Ulverston at Priory Road.
In Parliament, Simon is the inaugural Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for AUKUS.
In August 2023, Simon hosted the Cabinet Secretary and a group of senior civil servants and formed Team Barrow, as part of the mission to make Barrow the new ‘Powerhouse of the North’.
Simon is a keen (but really quite bad) runner, a worse cyclist, an avid reader and keeps a tortoise, Herman.
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