Mid Bucks MP Greg Smith on family and life at home

The father-of-three and former MP for Buckingham was elected to the new seat of Mid Bucks with a majority of nearly 6,000 in the July 4 general election.

Smith was born in the town of Bromsgrove in Worcestershire and most of his family are from Birmingham.

The MP grew up in the West Midlands and attended the historic fee-paying Bromsgrove School, whose alumni include the poet A. E. Housman, former deputy prime minister Michael Heseltine, and Dire Straits bassist John Illsley

Smith tells the Bucks Free Press: “This gives me quite the insight into just how bad the new government’s policy for VAT on school fees is.”

READ MORE: New Mid Bucks MP Greg Smith on Green Belt, Wycombe Hospital, HS2 and Tory leadership

The MP refers to the Labour Party’s plans to add 20 per cent VAT to independent school fees as soon as January.

He continues: “I am not from wealth. I am not from a poor background either. There is no rags to riches tale or anything like that.

“But I am not from a wealthy background, my mum was an early years teacher in the state sector and my dad was a policeman.”

Smith explains that he had a ‘comfortable’ middle class upbringing but insists that there was ‘not money slopping around’.

He adds: “My parents took a decision when I was eight that they wanted to send me to a private school and mother spent every single penny of her salary on the fees for that and we lived off my dad’s police salary.

“There’s lots of parents that send their kids to private school from that position, where if you suddenly up the fees by 20 per cent, they won’t be able to afford it anymore.”

The MP says Labour’s new tax would have barred his parents from sending him to private school.
After school, Smith went onto graduate from the University of Birmingham with a degree in political science, which in many ways he ‘regrets’.

“It bears no resemblance to reality, and I really wish I had done a history degree,” he says.

The MP later moved to London to start a career and launch a business, which he ran for 15 years.

He worked in print, design, and marketing across the manufacturing, medical technology, and charity sectors.

When Smith and his wife Annalise’s third son was on the way, they upped sticks to a larger home in Chearsley, where the MP says he and his family are ‘very happy in village life’.

“When we started having children, my wife and I knew we wanted to bring the children up in the countryside, so we moved to Wendover initially,” Smith says.

By October 2019, the MP had been selected to stand as the Conservative candidate for the now-abolished seat of Buckingham and was elected there in December.

In his free time, Smith, a lifelong McLaren supporter, enjoys watching Formula 1, 2, 3 and 4 and is a classic car enthusiast, although he ‘cannot afford one’.

But the MP spends most of his free time with his sons, often at some of the playgrounds and soft play areas in his constituency.

“They miss daddy in the week,” he adds, “My ability to be home for bedtime is zero when the House of Commons is sitting.”

He said: “Saturday and Sunday nights I can normally manage it [bedtime stories and bathtime for his children,” he says, “In the week, voting finishes at 7pm, 7:30pm in Westminster, so there is no physical way I can be back in Buckinghamshire for their bedtime.”

Smith says he still finds time to do some of the cooking at the weekend though.

“I am quite good at a few dishes,” he says, “I’m pretty proud of my chicken and chorizo stew – more of a winter dish than for right now. We’ll regularly try and do a curry from scratch.”

But Smith avoids the ‘fancy restaurants’ in the House of Commons, preferring to ‘dart into the cafeteria’ for quick bite to eat in between his work.

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