Paul Scully

Paul Stuart Scully (born 29 April 1968) is a British politician serving as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sutton and Cheam since 2015. A member of the Conservative Party, he served as its vice chairman for the London region from 2017 to 2019, having replaced Stephen Hammond for rebelling against the government over the EU withdrawal bill.

Scully was born in Rugby, Warwickshire on 29 April 1968. His father's family was originally from Burma. He was privately educated at Bedford School in Bedfordshire and the University of Reading. He moved to London after graduating and ran a number of small businesses. Scully joined the Conservative Party after the 1997 general election. He had previously voted for the Referendum Party, a Eurosceptic, single-issue political party that was active in the United Kingdom from 1994 to 1997.

Scully unsuccessfully stood as the Conservative candidate in the Wallington South ward of the London Borough of Sutton in 2002, but was subsequently elected in the Carshalton Central ward in 2006. He was the Leader of the Opposition on Sutton Council for three of his four years as a councillor. However, he lost his seat to the Liberal Democrat candidate at the following local election in 2010.

In addition to his work as a local councillor, Scully worked as a parliamentary aide for Conservative MPs Andrew Pelling, Shailesh Vara and Alok Sharma, and set up a public relations company called Nudge Factory Ltd in 2011.

He was selected as the Conservative Party candidate and subsequently elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sutton and Cheam in 2015, and was re-elected in the 2017 general election.

In September 2017, he was appointed as the Prime Minister's Trade Envoy to Brunei, Thailand and Burma and was the Parliamentary Private Secretary to Baroness Evans, the Leader of the House of Lords between November 2017 and January 2018. He is "very proud" of his Burmese heritage. In a parliamentary debate on 22 October 2015, he stated, "I am, I believe, the first Member of the British Parliament to be of Burmese heritage."

He visited Myanmar for the first time in February 2016. He has been active in human rights issues in Burma, especially the Rohingya refugee situation and is the Co-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Burma. He has written about his experience of being one of the first British MPs to visit the Kutupalong refugee camp during the 2017 mass movement.

He campaigned for a Leave vote in the 2016 EU referendum, and was a supporter of the campaign group Leave Means Leave.

In Parliament, he is a member of the International Development Committee and the chair of its sub-committee overseeing the work of Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI). He is also a member of the Petitions Committee on whose behalf he has led a number of debates.

In May 2016, it was reported that Scully was one of a number of Conservative MPs being investigated by police in the United Kingdom general election, 2015 party spending investigation, for allegedly spending more than the legal limit on constituency election campaign expenses. In May 2017, the Crown Prosecution Service said that while there was evidence of inaccurate spending returns, it did not "meet the test" for further action.

In June 2017, comments made by Scully at an election hustings event and on a regional BBC politics programme relating to building a new hospital in Sutton were criticised by health campaigners as representing an acceptance of closing some existing local medical facilities, such as the St Helier Hospital. Scully argued that he still remained committed to retaining facilities at the St Helier Hospital, where he had previously volunteered.

In October 2017, Scully was featured in national media coverage relating to four serving MPs who had business interest in lobbying companies, despite recent attempts to limit on the industry's access to Parliament. After being elected as an MP, Scully remained a director of the company Nudge Factory Ltd and owned a 40% stake in it. The article alleged that the company's clients included property firms developing land in and around his South London constituency. The article referred to a Parliamentary Question that Scully had recently tabled about the time it takes to bring derelict land back into use, with his supplementary question covering the matter of land owned by the NHS and targeted by Sutton council on which to build a biotech campus. Scully's business partner, Ahzaz Chowdhury, denied the allegations, responding that Scully stopped taking a salary from the company before being elected and that he had never asked any parliamentary questions prompted by the company or its clients.

On 15 December 2017, Scully was confirmed as the Conservative Party's new Vice Chairman for London, following the sacking of Stephen Hammond two days earlier for his failure to vote with the Government on a key vote relating to the United Kingdom departing the European Union. He helped manage the Conservative Party's campaign in the 2018 London local elections, where the party registered their lowest ever number of seats in the capital, but made a number of gains on the London Borough of Sutton Council. ″

Scully is married and has two grown-up children. He lives in Carshalton, in the neighbouring constituency.

Scully's wife Emma is employed by Nudge Factory Ltd as an Office Manager and replaced her husband as 'a person with significant control' on 1 April 2018.