Sir Conor Burns (born 24 September 1972) is a British politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Bournemouth West from 2010 to 2024.

He served as PPS to Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, before resigning from the post in 2018 because he wanted to speak more openly on other areas of policy.

He resigned from the post in 2020, after a Commons Select Committee on Standards inquiry found that he had threatened to use parliamentary privilege to intimidate a member of the public for his family's gain during a financial dispute involving his father.

Truss dismissed Burns from the post the following month when he had the whip suspended following an allegation of misconduct at the 2022 Conservative Party Conference.

[14] Burns was appointed as Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Hugo Swire, the Minister of State for Northern Ireland, in 2010, before which he briefly sat on the Education Select Committee.

[15] On 10 July 2012 he resigned as PPS to Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Owen Paterson to vote against the Coalition's House of Lords Reform Bill, of which he had been a consistent critic.

[18] He later criticised a letter[19] from Church of England bishops urging Christians to engage with the 2015 election as "naive" and "factually wrong".

[22] In 2015, an article in Private Eye[citation needed] implied that Burns' opposition to Navitus Bay Windfarm and subsidies for renewables was due to his connections to the oil and gas industry through Trant Engineering.

[27] Burns resigned as PPS to Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on 9 July 2018 because he wanted to speak more openly on other areas of policy.

Burns said: "These people think the normal rules of civilised society do not apply to them” and stated those involved in the encampment had turned the town into "a no go area for local residents and visitors.

He had written a letter on House of Commons notepaper in February 2019 in which he threatened to use parliamentary privilege to reveal the name of the director of a company which owed his father money as part of a long-running financial dispute and who had previously held a senior position in local government.

[36] On 25 January 2022, during the Westminster lockdown parties controversy, in an interview with Channel 4 News, Burns defended Johnson over an alleged surprise birthday get-together on 19 June 2020.

[49] Writing in 2008, Burns called for the international community to prepare a contingency plan for the governance of Zimbabwe after the eventual departure from office of Robert Mugabe.

[50] He was outspoken in calling on former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to grant asylum to young gay Iranian student Mehdi Kazemi.

[61][62] A practising Roman Catholic, he said in 2014 he feels unable to take communion since Bishop Philip Egan, of the diocese in which Burns resides, stated that those politicians who voted for same-sex marriage, even with the caveats upon which Burns had insisted (i.e. "guarantees that... churches would not ultimately be forced under human rights legislation to conduct such ceremonies"), should refrain from taking the sacrament.

[62][63] Burns was a friend of Margaret Thatcher in the later years of her life[64] and spoke in the House of Commons debate on 10 April 2013 following her death.