However, fellow Conservative Julian Lewis defeated Grayling in the ballot by using opposition votes to secure a majority, in what was seen as a blow to Johnson and his adviser Dominic Cummings.

[2] He ran several television production companies from late 1993, including managing the corporate communications division of Workhouse Ltd from 1992 to 1995 and SSVC Group in Gerrards Cross from 1995 to 1997.

[3] Grayling was selected to contest the Labour-held marginal seat of Warrington South at the 1997 general election, but was defeated by Labour candidate Helen Southworth by 10,807 votes.

Grayling served on the Environment, Transport and the Regions Select committee from 2001 until he was promoted to the Opposition Whips' Office by Iain Duncan Smith in 2002, moving to become a Spokesman for Health later in the year.

[13] In 2010, it was reported by the Daily Telegraph that an IP address associated with the Parliamentary estate had been discovered attempting to remove references to Chris Grayling's role in the expenses scandal from his Wikipedia page.

[14] As Shadow Home Secretary, Grayling provoked controversy in August 2009 when he compared Manchester's Moss Side area to the American TV crime drama The Wire.

Police responded that gang-related shootings in Greater Manchester had fallen by 82 per cent from the previous year and that to speak of "urban war" was "sensationalistic".

[18] A Conservative-commissioned report by the independent House of Commons library suggested that, depending on how figures were calculated, Grayling's claims may have been justifiable and that violent crime may have risen in the period between 1998 and 2009.

[citation needed] The policy later informed treatment of prisoners, refusing the right to vote, and clamping down on abusive behaviours in jails.

Sworn in as Lord Chancellor on 1 October 2012 at Westminster Abbey,[37] he was elected an Honorary Bencher of Gray's Inn on 11 December 2012, due in part to his lack of legal qualifications.

"[45] One of Grayling's first acts at the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) was to commence a project to change the way offenders were rehabilitated in an effort to cut reoffending rates.

[46][47] Grayling's ban on books being sent into UK prisons was widely criticised by the Howard League for Penal Reform and the literary establishment, including Philip Pullman, Mark Haddon, Anthony Horowitz, Susan Hill and Emma Donoghue.

[53][54] However, a report released in January 2020 by the MoJ stated that due to the reforms introduced by Grayling, adult and juvenile reoffending rates decreased substantially.

[55] In May 2019, incumbent Justice Secretary, David Gauke, announced offender supervision in England and Wales is to be returned to government control, under the management of the National Probation Service, reversing Grayling's policy.

Lawyers feared that defendants may plead guilty to avoid falling into debt, and the president of the Law Society described the change as a threat to fair trials.

[77] In January 2015, data relating to three fatal police shootings including details of marksmen and the deceased's family were lost in the post by the Justice Department.

[78] On multiple occasions in 2014 and 2015, Fathers 4 Justice protesters targeted Grayling's constituency home in Ashtead, Surrey in January and October 2015.

[86][87] He became criticised for various gaffes and controversies,[88][89][90][91] such as injuring a cyclist by unsafely opening the door of his ministerial car in October 2016[92][93] and misspending £2.7 billion of public funds over his tenure as Transport Secretary.

[95] On the last day before parliament closed for its summer recess in 2017, Grayling acknowledged that he had cancelled multiple railway electrification schemes in the north of England that had been promised by David Cameron and George Osborne.

[107] According to The Daily Telegraph, the RAF offered the assistance of a specialist anti-drone team almost immediately but Grayling's department – which would have had to pay for the service – was reluctant to accept.

[110] The Road Haulage Association said the firm had an impossible timescale in which to "source ferries, hire and train staff and link with relevant authorities".

[111] Despite Grayling's assurance that the usual procurement due diligence procedures had been followed, it was later revealed that Seaborne Freight issued terms and conditions designed for a food delivery business, not ferries;[112][113] that its chief executive previously ran a ship chartering business that was forced into liquidation following court petitions from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC); and that auditors performing the due diligence checks had reported serious concerns about the contract.

[118] On 13 February 2019, Grayling's department said that, following the collapse of the Seaborne Freight contract, it had "run out of time" to secure the substantial additional cross-channel transport capacity that could be needed in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

The matter was settled out of court, with Eurotunnel receiving £33 million as part of a deal in which the company will provide freight services in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

[122] In March 2019, Lord Adonis, former Labour transport minister, was critical of the delay in implementing services on the East Coast Mainline, using Class 800 trains.

Grayling said, "These new state-of-the-art trains show our commitment to put passengers at the heart of everything that we do and will carry people across Britain, from Swansea to Aberdeen and London to Inverness."

[128][129][130] There were fears it would be a "power grab" by Johnson and his senior adviser Dominic Cummings designed to avoid accountability over their links to Russia outlined in a suppressed report.

[137] On 21 July 2020, the committee released the previously repressed report which outlined how the government had failed to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 EU referendum.

[141] On 17 September 2020, it was announced that Grayling had been appointed to a £100,000-per-annum 7-hour-per-week job advising the British Virgin Islands-domiciled Hutchison Port Holdings Limited "on its environmental strategy and its engagement with local enterprise bodies".

[144] In May 2024, the Conservative Environment Network awarded Grayling the annual Sam Barker Memorial Prize for his efforts to reduce deforestation and maintain British wildlife habitats.