This article's subject stood for re-election to the British House of Commons on 4 July. This article may be out of date during and after this period. Feel free to improve it (updates without reliable references will be removed) or discuss changes on the talk page. Remove this template once the article is no longer out of date.
Kevin Foster was born on 31 December 1978 in Plymouth. His early education was at the community schoolHele's School. Foster then studied law at the University of Warwick, graduating with a LLB in 2000 and a LLM in 2001.[3] After graduating from university, he worked in the West Midlands as a paralegal and secretary for a number of firms.[4]
Foster was elected as MP for Torbay at the 2015 general election with 40.7% of the vote and a majority of 3,286.[11][12][13] His election agent Alison Hernandez was investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission over allegations she failed to properly declare election expenses that were submitted in her role.[14] This investigation was later dropped in 2017 by the Crown Prosecution Service as although "the returns may have been inaccurate, there is insufficient evidence to prove to the criminal standard that any candidate or agent was dishonest".[15]
Foster supported the United Kingdom remaining within the European Union at the 2016 Brexit referendum.[16] Since then, he has almost always voted against UK membership of the EU in Parliament.[17]
At the snap 2017 general election, Foster was re-elected as MP for Torbay with an increased vote share of 53% and an increased majority of 14,283.[18][19]
Foster was again re-elected at the 2019 general election with an increased vote share of 59.2% and an increased majority of 17,749.[24]
In February 2022, Foster received widespread criticism for stating on Twitter that Ukrainian refugees could use the seasonal worker scheme in order to get into the UK. Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, and Shadow Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, were among the critics, with the latter saying that Foster's comments showed 'a shameful moral vacuum at the heart of Government'. Foster deleted the tweet within hours.[25][26]
Kevin Foster married Hazel Noonan (born 1951) in 2017. They met in Coventry when he was a University of Warwick student. He was helping her to canvass for the Conservative Party in the local council elections in which she was a candidate. The 27-year age gap between Foster and Noonan has drawn comparisons to Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, who is also substantially younger than his partner.[32]
Notes
^Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Immigration from 2019 to 2020, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Future Borders and Immigration from 2020 to 2021
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