Derek Wyatt

Derek Wyatt
Member of Parliament for Sittingbourne and Sheppey
In office 1 May 1997 – 6 May 2010
Preceded by	Constituency Created
Succeeded by	Gordon Henderson
Personal details
Born	4 December 1949 (1949-12-04) Woolwich, London, UK
Nationality	British
Political party	Labour
Spouse(s)	Divorced
Children	2 (1 daughter, 1 son)
Alma mater	University of Exeter
Website	http://www.derekwyatt.co.uk/

Derek Murray Wyatt FRSA (born 4 December 1949) is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sittingbourne and Sheppey from 1997 to 2010, having previously been a councillor in the London Borough of Haringey.

Early life

Wyatt was educated at Westcliff County High School, Colchester Royal Grammar School, St Luke's College, Exeter (Certificate of Education 1971), the Open University (BA. Hons 2:1 in Art and Architecture 1978), and St Catherine's College, Oxford, where he was a research student from 1981 to 1982. From 1986 to 1988, he was a Director of William Heinemann. He was Head of Programmes at Wire TV from 1994 to 1995, and Director of the Computer Channel on BSkyB from 1995 to 1997.

Parliamentary career

Derek Wyatt founded and was chairman of the British House of Commons all party internet group from 1997 to 2007 when he led the merger of it to two other groups - mobile and communications. The new name is the All party communications Group and he is now co-Chairman with John Robertson MP. He advocates forcing internet service providers (ISPs) through licensing to take steps to block spam before it arrives in inboxes. The MP wanted Ofcom, the communications regulator, to take responsibility for licensing internet service providers - and fine those who fail to meet agreed standards.

He was on the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee from 1997 to 2005 and the Public Accounts Committee in 2007 before becoming the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Minister for the Arts and unofficially to Gerry Sutcliffe MP, Minister for Sport in July 2007. In February, 2009 he became PPS to Lord Mark Mallock-Brown at the Foreign Office. he chaired six all party committees in the House of Commons. In the critical votes on Iraq, he voted against intervention.

He won an ISPA Hero's Award (2006) for his work on seeing the Computer Misuse Act onto the statute book and the New Statesman Award (2006) for the best web site of an Elected Representative. Politicsonline nominated him as one of the top ten visionaries in the internet space also in 2006. Back in 2004, he was voted, in an online poll, as one of the top 100 Internet Visionaries. He founded the Oxford Internet Institute in 2000. In 2007, his web site won the British Computer Award for "best engagement" and in 2008 for the best over all site. He launched a second web site: www.derekwyatt.tv in October, 2007. His web site was updated 4 or 5 times a day and received upwards of 70,000 hits a week with about 15,000 unique visitors. It was one of the first MPs' web sites to be legally deposited with the British Library and can still be accessed at www.derekwyattexmp.co.uk .

He spent time at Berkeley and Stanford in 2003 undertaking a course in Brand & Change Management and in 2006 attended, as an Observer, the induction course for new Congressmen and women at the John Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He visited Paris in 2007 to follow the French Presidential elections examining online campaigning and repeated this exercise in Washington, DC and Chicago as part of the US Presidential election in 2008 and was fortunate enough to meet Barack Obama.

In the 2005 general election, he won the 3rd smallest majority of any MP, at just 79 votes, after 2 recounts.

On 1 July 2009, Wyatt announced he would stand down at the 2010 general election.

Personal life

Derek was a top-class rugby union player. He won one full cap for England as a wing, coming on as a replacement for David Duckham against Scotland at Murrayfield in February 1976. At the time, Wyatt was playing club rugby for Bedford; he would later be a regular for Bath. He also played for England against the United States at Twickenham in October 1977 in a match for which England did not award full caps and scored four tries in the match. He subsequently played for Oxford in the 1981 Varsity Match in which Rothmans Rugby Yearbook described him as the player of the day. He also represented the Barbarians. At school he was rated No.1 long jumper as a Youth and Junior and as a senior represented Essex AAA in the British Games jumping against the great Lyn Davies. He has written or edited seven books on rugby and his latest will be published in June, 2011(co-authored with Colin Herridge)entitled Rugby 2011: A Preview of the World Cup 2011.

Since standing down as an MP, he has formed his own company - Amber Digital Consultancy Ltd - and has helped set up joint ventures in Egypt and India and advised on the Wikileaks story. He chairs Trinity Hospice in Clapham the oldest English hospice which celebrated its 120th year in 2011; he advises a number of shadow Labour ministers and sits on the board of CAABU, the Egypt British Business Council and Editorial Intelligence as well as still being on the Advisory Board at the Oxford University Internet Institute (which he founded). Wyatt is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, the Hon. Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, and the Industry & Parliamentary Trust; he is also a Freeman of the City of London. He is a trustee of Major Stanley's at Oxford University RFC and he is a very small shareholder of Charlton Athletic F.C..

He is divorced and has a daughter and a son.

External links

• Official Website
• Second Website
• Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Derek Wyatt MP
• TheyWorkForYou.com - Derek Wyatt MP
• Open Rights Group - Derek Wyatt MP
• Culture, Media and Sport Committee Press Notice No 1 of Session 2001-02 (23 July 2001)
• BBC Politics page

News items

• Winning New Statesman award in July 2006
• Praising Conservative election campaign in March 2005
• Criticising South East Development Agency in November 2002
• Dealing with internet spam in September 2002
• Calling for free internet access in March 1998

Video clips

• YouTube Channel