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How are Devon’s newest MPs faring?

Sunday, 10 May 2026 09:35

By Guy Henderson, local democracy reporter

House of Parliament (image courtesy: Radio Exe)

MP comes third out of 333

A new parliamentary activity report for 2025 has ranked a Devon MP in the top three for contributions made by new MPs elected for the first time in 2024.

Newton Abbot’s Liberal Democrat MP Martin Wrigley is in third place of 333 new MPs for his tally of combined spoken contributions and written questions, according to the political monitoring service PoliMonitor UK.

Using Parliament UK and Hansard data from January 1 to December 31, Mr Wrigley was found to have made 1,572 contributions, made up of 1,426 written questions and 146 spoken contributions.

Topping the chart was Conservative MP for Huntingdon Ben Obese-Jecty with 3,256 contributions.

Other Devon MPs who featured in the top ten of spoken contributions (excluding ministers) were Steve Darling (Lib Dem, Torbay) with 281 contributions and Rebecca Smith (Conservative, South West Devon) with 271, placing them ninth and tenth respectively.

The Torbay MP was ranked at 20th overall for all his contributions and Rebecca Smith 60th.

Devon’s other new MPs were placed as follows in the overall leaderboard: 

81, Rachel Gilmour (Lib Dem, Tiverton and Minehead)

82, Caroline Voaden (Lib Dem, South Devon) 

109, Ian Roome (Lib Dem, North Devon)

198, Steve Race (Labour, Exeter) 

229, David Reed (Conservative, Exmouth and Exeter East)

267, Fred Thomas (Labour, Plymouth Moorview)
 

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