Andrew Mackinlay

Andrew Stuart MacKinlay (born 24 April 1949) is a British Liberal Democrat politician, who was the Labour Member of Parliament (MP) for Thurrock from 1992 until he stepped down at the 2010 general election.

In parliament MacKinlay built a reputation as a hard-working constituency MP, gaining respect from all sides and as a stalwart of Gibraltar. In 2021 he was elected as a Liberal Democrat councillor for Kingston upon Thames London Borough Council, although he stood down a short time later, at the 2022 election.

Early life and career

MacKinlay was educated successively at St Joseph's School, Wembley; Our Lady Immaculate Primary School, Tolworth; Salesian College (a private Catholic school at the time), now comprehensive Salesian School in Chertsey and Kingston College, now part of the South Thames College Group. He worked from 1965 as a committee clerk with Surrey County Council until 1975, when he served as a union official with the National and Local Government Officers Association (NALGO). He joined NALGO in 1965. He joined the Labour Party in 1966. MacKinlay was elected as a Labour councillor in 1971 in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames and served for two terms as one of two councillors for the ward of Tolworth West until 1978. He unsuccessfully vied for his local seat of Surbiton in both of the 1974 general elections, keeping his deposit in what was then demonstrably a three-party contest.

Parliamentary career

Following unsuccessful election campaigns in the safe conservative seats of Croydon Central in 1983 and Peterborough in 1987, MacKinlay regained the historically safe Labour seat of Thurrock in 1992 from the Conservatives.

On 15 June 1992, he tabled an Early Day Motion, seeking a pardon for executed soldiers. This campaign eventually succeeded with the Armed Forces Act 2006, where section 359 pardoned 306 British Empire soldiers.

In 1998 MacKinlay was the first to introduce a freedom of information bill to the House of Commons.

In 2003, MacKinlay described Dr David Kelly as "chaff" during Dr. Kelly's appearance before the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. The committee was investigating issues around the British government's dossier on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

MacKinlay's question was:
:I reckon you are chaff; you have been thrown up to divert our probing. Have you ever felt like a fall-guy? You have been set up, have you not?
So in this context "chaff" is a reference to the radar countermeasure rather than to something of little value.

It emerged during Kelly's subsequent inquest that Kelly had been deeply upset by his treatment before the committee and had privately described an MP, assumed to be MacKinlay, as an "utter bastard". MacKinlay reportedly apologised to Kelly's widow for the remark.

According to one report, in May 2007, MacKinlay made the nomination that resulted in Gordon Brown having enough nominations to be certain of not facing a contest over the leadership of the party. However, another report states that the decisive nomination was made by Tony Wright with MacKinlay yet to nominate at that point.

Notice of resignation

On 24 July 2009, he announced that he would not stand at the next General Election due to disillusionment with the way he felt other MPs had caved in to party pressure rather than standing up for their beliefs. He said that the final straw was the failure of a number of Labour MPs who had expressed support for Gary McKinnon, awaiting extradition to the U.S. on computer hacking charges, to vote for a review of the extradition treaty.

Damages win

On 1 October 2009, MacKinlay accepted a public apology and libel damages from the BBC
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