The M P for Bourne for the past 18 years has been Quentin Davies who succeeded Sir Kenneth Lewis as the Conservative member on his retirement, the town being part of a larger constituency, formerly Stamford and Spalding and now Grantham and Stamford.

He was born in 1944 at Oxford where his father practised as a family doctor and studied at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he gained a first class honours degree in history, and later at Harvard in the United States where he was a Frank Knox Fellow.

Before entering politics, he served with the British Diplomatic Service and his appointments included Second Secretary at the Moscow Embassy and First Secretary at the Foreign Office. He later worked in investment banking, latterly as a Director and Head of European Corporate Finance for Morgan Grenfell.

He was married to Chantal in 1983 at Irnham, near Bourne, a village in his constituency, and they have two sons Alexander and Nicholas and have a family home near Boston in Lincolnshire.

Quentin Davies was first elected to Parliament in 1987 for Stamford and Spalding and since the boundary changes in 1997 he has represented Grantham and Stamford, both constituencies including Bourne where the Conservative Party headquarters are situated in North Street.

In Parliament, he served as Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Department for Education and Science and at the Home Office when the Conservative Party was in government. On the backbenches, he served on the Treasury Select Committee, the European Scrutiny Committee and on the Standards and Privileges Committee (Parliaments Ethics Committee). Since 1997, he has been successively an Opposition spokesman for Social Security and Pensions, for Treasury matters (Shadow Paymaster General), and for Defence, before being appointed to the Shadow Cabinet in 2001 as Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland until the change in leadership in November 2003. Since then, Mr Davies has been member of the Select Committee on International Development and he serves on the Finance Bill Committee to which he is elected each year.

In 1996, he was named Guardian Parliamentarian of the Year and Radio 4 Backbencher of the Year and given The Spectator Backbencher of the Year award in 1998. He is known as an independent-minded and outspoken M P with a long-standing record of expertise in financial and economic matters. His personal interests include reading, history, walking with his dog, the countryside and travel.

Mr Davies keeps in close touch with his constituency through regular surgeries that enable him meet the people to discuss issues and problems in Grantham, Stamford and Bourne. He also writes regular articles for the local newspapers and the Bourne Internet web site, as well as being a frequent contributor to national and local television and radio programmes.

He has been involved with several successful campaigns, spear-heading many years of lobbying which led to a lorry ban through Stamford in 2001 and he recently launched initiatives to revive both the Grantham and Stamford bypass projects. In 2004, he successfully intervened to save the two Citizens Advice Bureaux in his constituency whose funding was in doubt. He also led a robust campaign to restore the family doctor out-of-hours service, which had been removed by the primary care trust and this included securing a debate in the House of Commons (in October 2004) to challenge the Government on their responsibilities. This campaign achieved a considerable victory in which the Government and the PCT were forced to retreat and a doctor is now available on a 24-hour a day basis.

Protecting green spaces and the countryside in his constituency has been a major concern since Mr Davies was elected to Parliament. He has successfully intervened in a number of recent planning controversies including the development on meadowland surrounding The Croft in North Road, Bourne, speaking out against its use for housing at a public inquiry.

Mr Davies actively supports a number of voluntary and charitable organisations in the constituency. His formal associations with some of these include patron of the South Lincolnshire branch of the Alzheimer’s Society, president of Arthritis Care (Grantham branch), patron of the Stamford Shakespeare Company, and Stamford Amateur Musical Society, and a member of the Grantham, Stamford and Bourne Civic Societies.

Mr Davies says: “One of my proudest achievements in Parliament since 2001 was walking with parents through the blockade of the Holy Cross school in Belfast."

WRITTEN JULY 2005