Paul Uppal

Paul Singh Uppal (born 14 June 1967) is a Conservative Party politician from the United Kingdom. He was, for the parliament elected in the 2010 general election, the Member of Parliament for Wolverhampton South West, having won the seat from the incumbent Labour Party MP Rob Marris, with 16,344 votes and a majority of 691.

He was narrowly defeated in the 2015 General Election, when Rob Marris regained the seat with a majority of 801. He attempted to regain his seat in the 2017 snap general election, but despite increasing his vote share, he was defeated by a bigger margin of 2,185 votes.

On 20 December 2017, the government announced that he was to be the first Small Business Commissioner.

Uppal was born in Birmingham, to Surjit Singh Uppal, a magistrate, and Balbir Kaur on 14 June 1967.His parents are Sikhs of East African descent. He attended Harborne Hill Comprehensive School and then studied three A-levels in Politics, History and Sociology at Matthew Boulton College.He studied Politics and Sociology at the University of Warwick.

He married his wife Kashmir, a lawyer, on 17 November 1991 in Derby.They have three children together.He holds a season ticket for Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club, and is a trustee of the second largest Gurudwara (Sikh Temple) in Wolverhampton.

Uppal was selected as Conservative Party candidate for Birmingham Yardley less than three months before the 2005 general election.The seat was traditionally a Conservative-Labour marginal, but became a three-way marginal at the 1992 general election and a Labour-Liberal Democrat marginal since the 1997 general election, with the Conservatives pushed into an increasingly distant third place.Uppal came third in 2005, winning 2,970 votes, with Liberal Democrat John Hemming replacing the retiring Labour MP Estelle Morris.

In February 2007, Uppal was selected as Wolverhampton South West Conservative candidate in an open primary held at Molineux Stadium in which all constituents were entitled to vote.The seat, a safe Conservative seat held first by Enoch Powell from 1950 to 1974 and then by Nicholas Budgen became a Labour marginal held by Jenny Jones in 1997.Rob Marris held it from 2001 though the Labour majorities gradually reduced at each election and Uppal won the seat for the Conservatives in 2010.

In July 2010 he was elected Chairman of the All Party Urban Development Group.

In October 2011 he voted against a referendum on the UK's membership of European Union.

In September 2012 he was appointed PPS to David Willetts at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

In the run up to the 2015 General Election, both Uppal, his main opponent Rob Marris and even Ukip agreed that immigration was no longer a key issue in the seat which once belonged the controversial former MP Enoch Powell. Uppal highlighted the improvement in community relations whilst Marris expressed concern about zero-hour contracts, foodbanks and workers earning less than a living wage.

At the 2015 election, Uppal lost his seat to Rob Marris of Labour. Uppal stood as a candidate in his old seat in the 2017 snap election and despite increasing his party's vote by 3%, the Labour vote increased by 6.1% and he consequently lost by 2,185 votes.