Matthew Patten | |
---|---|
Member of the European Parliament for East Midlands | |
In office 2 July 2019 – 31 January 2020 | |
Preceded by | Emma McClarkin |
Succeeded by | Constituency abolished |
Personal details | |
Born | Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, England | 21 May 1962
Other political affiliations |
Brexit (2019–2021) Conservative (until 2019) |
Matthew Richard Patten [1] (born 21 May 1962) is a former British politician, who represented the Brexit Party. He was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the East Midlands between 2019 and the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the EU on 31 January 2020. [2] He had previously been a Conservative [3] councillor for Bradfield, Wix and Wrabness in Tendring District, Essex. [4]
Patten was once the Chief Executive of the cricket and disability sports charity The Lord's Taverners. [5] He was the Chief Executive for the social mobility charity Mayor's Fund for London from 2012 until 2018, [6] and spoke at the November 2017 ACEVO conference on the third sector. [7] In 2015, he called for a watchdog similar to Ofsted to "improve performance, prevent abuse and give confidence to funders and other stakeholders" within British charities. [8]
In the European Parliament he was appointed a member of the Employment and Social Affairs Committee, the Delegation for Relations with Iran and the Delegation to the EU-North Macedonia Joint Parliamentary Committee.
He was the Brexit Party's prospective parliamentary candidate for Clacton-on-Sea for the 2019 general election, [9] but withdrew when Nigel Farage announced the party would not contest Tory-held seats. [10] In 2021, he served briefly as campaign manager for London mayoral candidate Laurence Fox of the Reclaim Party. [11] He is the Political & Communications Director of the think tank, Centre for Social Justice.