Dominic Charles Roberts Grieve (born 24 May 1956) is an English barrister and former politician who served as Shadow Home Secretary from 2008 to 2009 and Attorney General for England and Wales from 2010 to 2014. He served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Beaconsfield from 1997 to 2019 and was the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee from 2015 to 2019.
Grieve attended the Cabinet as Attorney General for England and Wales and Advocate General for Northern Ireland from May 2010 to July 2014. He was dismissed as Attorney General by Prime Minister David Cameron as part of the 2014 Cabinet reshuffle, and was replaced by Jeremy Wright. Elected as a Conservative, Grieve had the Conservative whip removed in the September 2019 suspension of rebel Conservative MPs. He unsuccessfully stood as an independent candidate in Beaconsfield at the 2019 general election.
A liberal conservative, Grieve was a central figure on Brexit and frequently used his experience as a lawyer to propose amendments on the issue, with his interventions often being at odds with government policy. A prominent Remain supporter on Brexit, Grieve called for a second referendum on EU membership, and before being expelled had said that he and other Conservative rebels would support a vote of no confidence to bring down a Conservative government, if that were the only way to block the "catastrophic" damage from a bad Brexit. In spring 2019, Grieve was threatened with deselection by his local party after losing a confidence vote by members. In October 2019, following removal of the whip, Grieve announced that he would stand as an independent candidate in his constituency's seat at the next general election. It was announced that the Liberal Democrats would stand aside to help him, but to no avail, as he lost his seat.
Grieve is the president of the Franco-British Society. He was awarded the Legion of Honour in 2016, and broadcasts in French on French radio and television. He is a practising Anglican and was a member of the London diocesan synod of the Church of England. Grieve is also a member of the Garrick Club.
Early life Grieve was born in Lambeth, London, the son of Percy Grieve, QC (the MP for Solihull 1964–83), and of an Anglo-French mother, Evelyn Raymonde Louise Mijouain (d. 1991), maternal granddaughter of Sir George Roberts, 1st and last baronet.Who was Who vol. X, 1996–2000, St Martin's Press, p. 231 He was educated at the Lycée français Charles de Gaulle on Cromwell Road in South Kensington, Colet Court (an all-boys' preparatory school in Barnes) and Westminster School. He went to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in modern history in 1978. He was the President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1977.
Grieve continued his studies at the Polytechnic of Central London (now the University of Westminster), where he received a Diploma in Law in 1979.
Legal career He was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple in 1980 and is a specialist in occupational safety and health law.
Political career Local council He was elected as a councillor in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham for the Avonmore ward in 1982, but did not stand for re-election in 1986. He contested the Norwood constituency in the London Borough of Lambeth at the 1987 general election but finished in second place behind the veteran Labour MP John Fraser.
Member of Parliament
He was elected to the House of Commons for the Buckinghamshire seat of Beaconsfield at the 1997 general election following the resignation of Tim Smith in the cash-for-questions affair. Grieve was elected with a majority of 13,987 votes and remained the MP there until his defeat in the 2019 general election.
He made his maiden speech on 21 May 1997.
He was a member of both the Environmental Audit and the Statutory Instruments select committees from 1997 to 1999. In 1999, he was promoted to the frontbench by William Hague as a spokesman on Scottish affairs, moving to speak on home affairs as the spokesman on criminal justice following the election of Iain Duncan Smith as the new leader of the Conservative Party in 2001, and was then promoted to be shadow Attorney General by Michael Howard in 2003. Grieve also had responsibility for community cohesion on behalf of the Conservative Party. He voted for the Iraq War in 2003.
He was retained as Shadow Attorney General by the new Conservative Leader David Cameron, and was appointed Shadow Home Secretary on 12 June 2008, following the resignation of David Davis.
In early 2006, Grieve was instrumental in the defeat of the Labour government on its proposal that the Home Secretary should have power to detain suspected terrorists for periods up to 90 days without charge.
In the last Conservative Shadow Cabinet reshuffle before the general election of 2010, carried out on 19 January 2009, Grieve was moved to become Shadow Justice Secretary, opposite Jack Straw. According to the BBC, Grieve was said to be "very happy with the move" which would suit his talents better.
On 28 May 2010, he was appointed to the Privy Council as part of the 2010 Dissolution of Parliament Honours List.
Following the 2010 general election, Grieve was appointed as Attorney General. He was one of four members of the cabinet who abstained in the May 2013 same-sex marriage vote. He said that he believed that the Bill had been "badly conceived".
On 22 November 2013, Grieve was reported as stating politicians need to "wake up" to the issue of corruption in some minority communities and that "corruption in parts of the Pakistani community is 'endemic. Two days later he apologised and said he had not meant to suggest there was a "particular problem in the Pakistani community".
Grieve was sacked from the cabinet by David Cameron in July 2014 and replaced by Jeremy Wright. Grieve believed this was because of his support for the European Court of Human Rights, although no reason was given;<ref>Dominic Grieve: 'I had no reason to think that the prime minister would want to fire me'</</ref> the sacking also occurred a few weeks after Grieve gave Cameron incorrect legal advice on whether he could make a public comment on the Andy Coulson trial.
Grieve volunteered at the Sufra food bank in January 2015 to highlight issues relating to the increased use of food banks.Sufra (charity): Annual Report 14-15, Accessed: 13 November 2022 In October 2016, speaking at a fringe meeting of the Conservative party's annual conference, Grieve warned that electoral fraud is found "where there are high levels of inhabitants from a community in which there is a tradition of electoral corruption in their home countries." Although in the past he apologised for singling out the British Pakistani community, Grieve said it was not about any one group.
In July 2019, following the appointment of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, Grieve described Johnson as a "charlatan".
Removal of Conservative whip
On 3 September 2019, Grieve joined 20 other rebel Conservative MPs to vote against the Conservative government of Boris Johnson. The rebel MPs voted with the Opposition against a Conservative motion which subsequently failed; the successful vote allowed a debate on a Bill which would block a no-deal Brexit. Subsequently, all 21 were advised that they had lost the Conservative "whip", expelling them as Conservative MPs, requiring them to sit as independents. If they decided to run for re-election in a future election, the Party would block their selection as Conservative candidates. In October 2019, Grieve announced that he was planning to stand again in his seat as an independent. The Liberal Democrats decided not to contest the Beaconsfield constituency (giving Grieve an increased chance at defeating the Conservative candidate Joy Morrissey). The deal was described at the time as "the first significant move towards the formation of a 'remain alliance' at the general election".Tim Shipman, Caroline Wheeler, 'Liberal Democrats will step aside at general election for Dominic Grieve, The Times, 5 October 2019. He polled 16,765 votes (29%) losing the seat to Morrisey who polled 32,477 votes (56%), a majority of 15,712 on a 75% electoral turnout.
Brexit Grieve was opposed to Brexit before the 2016 referendum.
In May 2017, prior to the general election and in support of the Conservative manifesto, Grieve stated on his website that "the decision of the electorate in the Referendum must be respected and that I should support a reasoned process to give effect to it".
During the Brexit negotiation process, Grieve made a number of amendments against the Government's plans to leave the EU. The first was to give Parliament a "meaningful vote" over the Brexit agreement – i.e. to force a motion by Parliament to approve the Brexit agreement which would have a binding effect on the government. In December 2017, he tabled an amendment (Amendment 7) to the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill requiring any Brexit deal to be enacted by statute, rather than implemented by government order. The amendment was opposed by the government, but was passed in Parliament. Another proposed amendment tabled on 12 June 2018 (Amendment 19), and again on 20 June, was designed to strengthen the binding effect of the meaningful vote, by requiring that the government follow the directions of a Parliamentary motion in the event that Parliament does not approve the withdrawal agreement put by the government. Grieve threatened to rebel but ultimately voted with the government against the amendment after verbal assurances from Prime Minister Theresa May, presented as a compromise; the outcome was summarised by The Guardian as "Technically, MPs can still have a vote on the final deal – or no deal – but unless it is a vote of confidence, the government can ignore it." Grieve's 3rd amendment in December 2018 would mean Parliament would replace the Government in deciding the outcome of Brexit following a vote against the Government's proposed deal with the EU.
On 24 July 2018, Grieve wrote a column for The Independent backing the online paper's final say petition, which calls for the British electorate to have a "final say on the Brexit deal". The petition was also backed by the leader of the People's Vote campaign, MP Chuka Umunna. Grieve stated that Brexit puts the Conservative Party's reputation for "economic competence" at risk.Brexit damaging Tory reputation for economic competence, says Dominic Grieve The Scotsman
Grieve wrote that Theresa May risked a "polite rebellion" from pro-EU MPs and a "significant" number would support another referendum if there was no deal. This followed a claim that Tory rebels are prepared to "collapse the government" to block a "catastrophic" Brexit deal.
Grieve was one of the signatories of a December 2018 statement by a group of senior Conservatives calling for a second referendum over Brexit. On 11 January 2019, during his speech to the convention for a second referendum, Grieve described Brexit as "national suicide". Shortly afterwards, he co-founded the group Right to Vote. He also declared that he would resign the whip if the Conservative Party elected Boris Johnson as a successor to Theresa May or if the government took Britain out of the EU without a deal.