On re-entering parliament in 1992, Ottaway served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Michael Heseltine MP and from October 1995 he was a Government Whip.

[2] In 2011, he was declared The Week's "Backbencher of the Year" based on his committee's enquiry into Afghanistan[3] that was highly critical of Government policy and urged the UK to do more to encourage the US to talk with the Taliban in pursuance of peace.

[citation needed] As a long-standing campaigner for the right of terminally ill people to die at home of their choosing, Ottaway tabled a historic backbench committee debate on assisted suicide in the House of Commons in March 2012.

[6] This resulted in Parliament agreeing for the first time that it is not in the public interest to prosecute people who compassionately help a loved one requesting assistance to die.

In October 2012, he debated at the Oxford Union in favour of the motion: This House Would Legalise Assisted Dying, and won by 167 to 131 votes.

[citation needed] He led an inquiry into the UK's relationship with Hong Kong, a former British colony, 30 years after the Joint Declaration amid series pro-democracy protests.

His questioning of Prime Minister Tony Blair on 4 February 2003[14] revealed that Blair had not appreciated that Iraq possessed only defensive battlefield or small-calibre weaponry rather than long-range weapons of mass destruction when he made his speech in the Iraq debate that led to the House of Commons voting in favour of war.

Ottaway was a founding member of the European Mainstream Group,[15] formed in February 2013 to articulate a positive Conservative attitude to Europe as set out by David Cameron in his Bloomberg Speech.

During the Daily Telegraph expenses scandal it was revealed that Ottaway claimed for a second home nine miles south of the constituency, with another house minutes from Parliament.

Ottaway apologised to constituents for his part in 'allowing an indefensible system of allowances to develop'[24] and announced he would let Croydon South party members decide his fate in a vote of confidence.

The local association's President, Lord Bowness, chaired the meeting, which ended in a secret ballot that Ottaway won.

[citation needed] It was reported that Ottaway called the police for 'security' when a group of constituents – most of whom were of pension age – visited his office to hand in a petition against the 'Gagging Law' (Transparency of Lobbying, non-Party Campaigning, and Trade Union Administration Bill) on 17 January 2014.