Sir Philip Andrew Davies (born 5 January 1972) is a British Conservative politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Shipley in West Yorkshire following the 2005 general election until 2024.

Davies has regularly been criticised by other politicians and prominent public figures[10] for comments he has made on gender equality and women,[11] homosexuality,[12] ethnic minorities,[13] as well as people with disabilities.

[22] At the 2001 general election, Davies unsuccessfully contested Colne Valley as the Conservative candidate, where he came second with 30.5% of the vote behind the incumbent Labour MP Kali Mountford.

[19] In November 2012, Davies wrote to the Metropolitan Police requesting it to open a second investigation into ex-Labour MP Denis MacShane's expenses claims.

[40] Davies has been repeatedly criticised for his use of the filibuster to block legislation, particularly when private members' bills under the Ten Minute Rule are debated.

[41] When asked by a journalist whether his tactics were underhand, Davies said: "When I first got elected to Parliament my mentor was Eric Forth [the former Tory MP] and he really was the past master of talking out bills on a Friday.

[43] The commissioner required Davies to apologise for breaching the parliamentary code after not declaring an interest in a debate and at the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, namely £870 of hospitality from the bookmaker Ladbrokes, rather than the larger amount complained about.

[44] Davies told Parliament the omission was not "due to a desire to conceal it ... but to an oversight" and he was "very grateful to [the rest of the committee] for accepting that mine had been a genuine error".

[45] In December 2016, Davies was cleared of wrongdoing over claims alleging "extremely favourable" treatment he had received from Ladbrokes – the lifting of restrictions on his betting account.

[47] In November 2018, Tracey Crouch resigned as sports minister since she believed Philip Davies successfully went above her and secured a delay to curbs on fixed odds betting terminals.

[51] In February 2023, having been entertained at Les Ambassadeurs luxury casino in Mayfair, central London, Davies wrote to the culture secretary Lucy Frazer, urging her to introduce a measure that was subsequently included in the UK Government's 'Gambling Act Review White Paper'.

"[53] On Monday 2 December, it was announced that Davies had been appointed as the Chairman of Star Sports Group of Companies; succeeding Russ Wiseman.

[56] He has called for government to "scrap the Human Rights Act for foreign nationals and chuck them out of the country"[57] and in 2016 expressed admiration for Donald Trump.

Davies was the parliamentary spokesman for the inactive Campaign Against Political Correctness[66] and was accused of wasting the Equality and Human Rights Commission's time by sending a stream of correspondence to its chair, Trevor Phillips, between 2008 and 2009.

[13] Peter Herbert, the chair of the Society of Black Lawyers, said: "This correspondence seems a complete and utter waste of time... he shouldn't be using the Human Rights Commission as basically a source of legal advice".

[72] Following an interim report on the connections between colonialism and properties now in the care of the National Trust, including links with historic slavery, Davies was among the signatories of a letter to The Telegraph in November 2020 from the "Common Sense Group" of Conservative Parliamentarians.

In an interview with the BBC Two programme Daily Politics, Davies stated his reasoning for voting against it was "You can have civil partnerships and marriage for gay people.

[83] The committee originally rejected his case, but a debate in Westminster Hall on 19 November was eventually granted after Labour and Conservative colleagues gave their support.

[91] Davies responded by providing figures from the Ministry of Justice collected by men's-rights lobby group Parity, which he argued suggest that the courts favour women when sentencing.

[96] "Philip Davies doesn't even think that the Women’s and Equalities Committee should exist, yet he's about to join it", commented the Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, "perhaps giving him a chance to rethink his views".

[85] A few days later in December 2016, Davies talked for 78 minutes in an unsuccessful attempt to derail a Bill designed to bring Britain in line with the Istanbul Convention whose purported aim is to protect women against violence.

[109] Davies said: "If they feel that for a short period of time, taking a lower rate of pay to help them get on their first rung of the jobs ladder is a good thing, I don't see why we should be standing in their way.

[14] As part of his use of the filibuster technique, in October 2015, Davies led a sequence of speeches[112] that resulted in a private members' bill exempting parking charges for hospital carers being 'talked out'.

[113] The comedian Russell Howard in his programme Good News, called him an "arsehole", "windbag", "wanker" and a "toad-faced hypocrite" and accused the MP of filibustering.

The BBC stated "that the programme did not fully represent his comments, which were, that it would be in the best interests of disabled people, and others, to be allowed to offer to work for less than the minimum wage, if the alternative were no employment at all".

The bill was temporarily stopped because an anonymous Tory MP shouted "object", but was passed into law after intervention by Conservative whips.

The Power 2010 campaign ran a full-page advertisement in The Guardian stating Davies was one of six MPs[119] accused of "failing our democracy" by opposing parliamentary reform.

Davies responded in the local press saying that it was "misleading not to put on the poster which issues I am for or against", but had "no complaints about them including things that are correct, but they must be clear on my views on ID cards and English voting".

[124] Davies was critical of restrictions put in place following the COVID-19 pandemic, such as a 10 pm pub curfew, calling Health Secretary Matt Hancock a "nanny state socialist" for supporting them.

[130] He lives in Shipley and also has shared a flat in London with fellow MP Esther McVey,[1] with whom he reportedly had a "long time on-and-off romantic interest".