George Turner (British politician)

Turner attended Laxton Grammar School (now part of Oundle School) on North Street in Oundle. At Imperial College London he gained a BSc in Physics, then obtained a PhD in Physics from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He then became Head of the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of East Anglia.

Turner contested North West Norfolk on behalf of Labour in 1992, but failed to be elected. He was returned as the Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency in 1997, but lost his seat back to Henry Bellingham of the Conservative Party – whom he had first defeated – in 2001.

In defeating Bellingham in 1997 Turner benefitted from a somewhat curious echo of a famous historical episode, as noted by the Conservative peer and historian Lord Lexden during a debate in the House of Lords in 2012. Referring to Spencer Perceval, the only Prime Minister to have been assassinated, Lexden remarked in that debate: "My Lords, would my noble friend think of reminding Mr Henry Bellingham that he has already experienced the Perceval family's taste for revenge, having been deprived of his Commons seat at the 1997 election by a direct descendant of the assassinated Prime Minister?"[1] Perceval's descendant was a third candidate in the constituency, Roger Percival of the Referendum Party, who in Lexden's view had deprived Bellingham (in turn a kinsman of Spencer Perceval's assassin, John Bellingham, and thus a suitable target for "revenge") of a critical number of votes in the election, thereby delivering victory to George Turner.

He married Lesley Duggan. They have two daughter and a stepson.

• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs

• They Work For You
• Ask Aristotle
• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by George Turner