Simon Christopher Coombs (born 21 February 1947), is a former

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...

politician. Coombs was MP for

Swindon Swindon () is a town and unitary authority with Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough status in Wiltshire, England. As of the 2021 Census, the population of Swindon was 201,669, making it the largest town in the county. The Swindon un ...

from 1983 until 1997 when the seat was divided by boundary changes. Coombs stood in the new

Swindon South South Swindon is a constituency in the Borough of Swindon, Wiltshire, represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2010 by Sir Robert Buckland, a Conservative, who previously served as Justice Secretary and Welsh Secretary. ...

seat but lost to

Labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

's Julia Drown. He stood again for the seat in 2001, but was unsuccessful. Coombs' Parliamentary term coincided with Swindon being the centre of a technology boom. Sir

Tim Berners Lee Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He is a Professorial Fellow of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and a profess ...

developed the idea of the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...

while at the

Science and Engineering Research Council The Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) and its predecessor the Science Research Council (SRC) were the UK agencies in charge of publicly funded scientific and engineering research activities, including astronomy, biotechnology and bi ...

(SERC) in Swindon. Coombs served as Treasurer of

PITCOM The Parliamentary Information Technology Committee (PITCOM) was a United Kingdom Parliament Associate Parliamentary Group set up "to address the public policy issues generated by Information technology, IT and its application across the United Ki ...

, the Parliamentary Information Technology Committee and as Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Rt. Hon Kenneth Baker, MP, Minister of Information Technology in the Department of Trade and Industry, and as PPS to Baker during his 1984–85 term as Minister for the Environment. He later served as PPS to Rt. Hon

Ian Lang Ian Bruce Lang, Baron Lang of Monkton, PC DL (born 27 June 1940) is a British Conservative Party politician and Life Peer who served as the Member of Parliament for Galloway, and then Galloway and Upper Nithsdale, from 1979 to 1997. On 29 Sep ...

, MP during his terms as Secretary of State for Scotland (1992–1995) and President of the Board of Trade (1995–1997). Coombs also served as Parliamentary advisor to the UK Cable Television Association, representing at the time the constituency with the highest cable penetration in the country. He was also Chairman of the Conservative Backbench Tourism Committee and a member of the British Recording Industry Association's All-Party Parliamentary Group and the Select Committee on Employment. Since leaving Parliament, he has kept active in the music sphere as a trustee of the

Ralph Vaughan Williams Ralph Vaughan Williams, (; 12 October 1872– 26 August 1958) was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over ...

Society and organizer of the Vaughan Williams exhibition in the composer's home village of

Down Ampney Down Ampney (pronounced ''Amney'') is a medium-sized village located in Cotswold district in Gloucestershire, in England. The population taken at the 2011 census was 644. It is off the A417 which runs between Cirencester and Faringdon (in Oxf ...

References

*''Times Guide to the House of Commons'',

Times Newspapers Limited News Corp UK & Ireland Limited (trading as News UK, formerly News International and NI Group) is a British newspaper publisher, and a wholly owned subsidiary of the American mass media conglomerate News Corp. It is the current publisher o ...

, 1997

External links

* 1947 births Living people Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies UK MPs 1983–1987 UK MPs 1987–1992 UK MPs 1992–1997 {{England-Conservative-UK-MP-1940s-stub