Craig Whittaker

Born in 1962 in Radcliffe, Lancashire, Whittaker emigrated to Australia at the age of five with his parents. In 1984, he returned to England and settled in Yorkshire. He was a Retail General Manager for a high street retailer and was involved in Retail Management from leaving high school in Australia, after completing his Higher School Certificate. He was the Branch Manager at Wilkinson for six years and then became the Retail General Manager for PC World for an eleven-year period until 2009. During his time living in Heptonstall, a village in the borough, he served on the Parish Council from 1998–2003.

In 2003, Whittaker was elected to Calderdale Council for the Brighouse Ward, gaining the seat from the Labour Party He stood down from the Council at the 2004 local elections. In 2007, he was once again elected to Calderdale Council, this time for the neighbouring ward of Rastrick, securing 1,336 votes for the Conservatives and increasing the Party’s majority. During this period, Whittaker served as the Cabinet Member for Children & Young People. Whittaker is a former Chair of the Calder Valley Conservatives and a former Conservative Party agent who managed the unsuccessful 2005 general election campaign of Liz Truss, then the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Calder Valley.

Whittaker was selected to be the Conservative Party’s candidate for Calder Valley in March 2007. In the May 2010 general election, he was elected as the MP for constituency being the first Conservative to represent the seat since before the 1997 general election, securing a 3.6% increase in the Conservative vote and polling 20, 397 votes.

Whittaker served on the Education Select Committee in the 2010–2015 Parliament. He set up a charity, Together for Looked after Children, to support the life chances of children in care in Calderdale, which he discussed in his maiden speech in Parliament in 2010. During his time on the Committee, he spoke out against the Government on occasion and criticized policy in relation to transferring responsibility for careers advice to schools, describing it as a "bit of a pigs ear". He also served as chair for the Parliamentary group for children in care

In May 2012, he argued against legalising same sex-marriage on the basis it could lead to successive governments supporting polygamy or "three way marriages".

In the run up to the 2015 general election, Whittaker attracted criticism for sharing, via a tweet, a Daily Mail newspaper column by Richard Littlejohn headlined "Vote Labour? I'd rather trust Jimmy Savile to babysit".

Following his re-election in 2015, he was appointed as Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the Immigration Minister, James Brokenshire MP. Since then, he has been appointed as PPS to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Karen Bradley. His record of attending votes is above average for MPs and he tables more Written Parliamentary Questions than the average amongst MPs.

Whittaker was one of 79 Conservative MPs who supported a 2011 rebel motion calling for a referendum on the EU. He also joined a 2013 rebel amendment expressing regret at not including the referendum in the government's plans. Whittaker subsequently backed the government's plans to hold a referendum, and supported Remain during the 2016 EU membership referendum, but subsequently said he support the Brexit result of the Referendum and the government's position on triggering Article 50.

His voting recordshows that he consistently voted against equal gay rights, almost always voted against a right to remain for EU nationals already in living in the UK, almost always voted for increasing the rate of VAT, consistently voted against increasing the tax rate applied to income over £150,000, almost always voted against a banker’s bonus tax, consistently voted for raising England’s undergraduate tuition fee cap to £9,000 per year and generally voted against measures to prevent climate change.

Whittaker is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and lives with his wife, businesswoman Elaine Wilkinson, in Rastrick. The couple married in the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft at the House of Commons in August 2011.

Craig was arrested on Boxing Day 2011 for allegedly attacking his son in Mytholmroyd.