Michael John Mates (born 9 June 1934) is a Conservative Party politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency of East Hampshire from 1974 to 2010.

[6] Prior to his election to the House of Commons, he served for twenty years in the British Army leaving in 1974 with the rank of lieutenant colonel with the 1st The Queen's Dragoon Guards.

[citation needed] In July 2012 Mates was selected as the Conservative candidate in the election for Police and crime commissioner for Hampshire, notwithstanding his links to Asil Nadir[12] who, in August 2012 was convicted of theft amounting to £29m.

[15][16] In September 2012 Michael Crick of Channel 4 News said that Mates had repeatedly refused to answer questions about a windfall he received having vacated a sitting tenancy at Dolphin Square, central London, when an MP.

[19] The former lawyer wrote to the county's Chief Constable alleging that Mates breached the 2006 Fraud Act by giving his address as a house where he rents rooms in Winchester.

[23] The Panama Papers revealed that Mates was minority shareholder of an offshore investment company named Haylandale Limited from 2005 to at least April 2010, the end of his parliamentary period, and owned four subsidiary firms from August 2007 to December 2008 for leasing and services connected to luxury properties in The Bahamas.

[24] Mates had, however, previously declared that he was the remunerated Chairman of Haylandale, which undertook property development in the West Indies, in the Register of Members' Interests for the period of 2005 to 2010.

[26] Partnered by composer William Godfree, Mates regularly performs tributes to Flanders and Swann, Noël Coward and others in aid of charity.