Gary Streeter
British politician (born 1955)
Sir Gary Nicholas Streeter (born 2 October 1955) is a Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom. He served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for over 30 years, representing South West Devon from its creation in 1997 to 2024, and previously holding its main predecessor seat of Plymouth Sutton, from which the majority its electorate was taken, between 1992 and 1997. During the Fifty-fifth Parliament, Streeter had been the longest-serving MP representing a constituency in the county of Devon.
Early life
Streeter attended Tiverton Grammar School, Tiverton, Devon, where he was head boy from 1972 to 1973, then King's College London, where he gained a first-class honours law degree. From 1984 to 1998, he was a solicitor and partner at Foot and Bowden (now called Foot Anstey) in Plymouth, where he specialised in company and employment law. In 1998 Streeter was fined £1,000 by the Law Society for conduct unbecoming a solicitor due to a conflict of interest when dealing with a business merger in 1991 while with Foot Bowden Limited.
Streeter's initial political experience was as a councillor on Plymouth City Council, where he represented Mount Gould ward from 1986 to 1992. Having been elected to serve as a member of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), in January 1988 he defected to the Conservative Party. Reflecting on his career in an interview with the Plymouth Evening Herald years later, Streeter attributed his initial party allegiance to the influence of David Owen, then SDP leader and MP for Plymouth Devonport, but explained that by 1988 he had come to "believe strongly in individual responsibility, in the family, the nation, enterprise. I thought to myself 'I am a natural Conservative, what am I doing in the SDP?' So I crossed over."
Parliamentary career
Streeter served as a junior minister in the Lord Chancellor's Department under Prime Minister John Major from 1996 until the defeat of the Major Government in 1997.
The public source identifies “Gary Streeter” as british politician (born 1955). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Gary, Streeter and British.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q328791. VIAF identifies the subject as 63516883. The Library of Congress control number is nb2002064953. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1955, 1997, 2024 and 1992.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gary Streeter” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.