Ian Paisley Jr

Ian Richard Kyle Paisley Jr (born 12 December 1966) is a British unionist politician.

Born in Belfast in 1966, Paisley is the youngest child of the Reverend Ian Paisley and his wife Eileen Paisley, Baroness Paisley of St George's.

The younger Ian, along with his twin brother (Kyle) and his three elder sisters (Sharon, Rhonda and Cherith), was brought up in a large detached house on Cyprus Avenue in east Belfast.

Being the younger of the twins, he was named after his father who was the younger of two brothers.

He regularly attended the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster (where his father preached) from a very young age.

In 1996, Paisley was elected to the Northern Ireland Forum for North Antrim.

He was returned for the constituency to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1998.

He is one of three DUP members who have taken their seats on the Northern Ireland Policing Board, and is also the party's justice spokesman and press officer.

In March 1998, Paisley and Sammy Wilson spoke at a rally in Portadown organised by the paramilitary Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) in opposition to political negotiations preceding the Good Friday Agreement.

In August 2007, he was the subject of the third episode of the BBC Radio 4 series The House I Grew Up In in which he talked about a happy childhood and secure family life, despite the Troubles.

After leaving primary school, Paisley was educated at Shaftesbury House College, and then in the sixth form at Methodist College Belfast, before gaining admission to Queen's University Belfast.

There he gained a BA (Hons) in Modern History followed by a MSSc in Irish Politics.

After finishing his postgraduate studies, he worked for his father as a political researcher and parliamentary aide.

A member of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), he has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for North Antrim since the 2010 general election, and was previously a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for North Antrim from 1998 to 2010.

Paisley is the DUP's Spokesperson for Digital, Culture, Media and Sports.

He is a son of the DUP's founder Ian Paisley.

Paisley successfully ran to succeed his father as the MP for North Antrim in the 2010 UK general election, winning 46.4% of the vote share.

Upon his election as MP, he resigned his seat in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Although there were rumours that Paisley Jr was positioning himself to become leader of his party, he denies any such ambition: "I've no ambition for that at all. I've never had any ambition to get anywhere beyond where I am today. Some people sought to put the knife in, in order to stop me, because they were concerned about me wanting to be leader. Well, they misjudged me completely."

In 2022, Paisley introduced legislation that would affect Northern Ireland's ability to leave the United Kingdom.

Paisley's bill would change the law so that a simple majority vote would no longer be enough for reunification with Ireland.

During the 2010–2015 Parliament, Paisley claimed a total of £1,112,667 in expenses.

For the 2011–12 financial year, Paisley's total expenses claim was the seventh-highest of all members of parliament.

His expenses for the 2012–13 financial year were £232,000; the highest of any MP that year.

The costs covered travel and accommodation for Paisley himself and his constituency staff.

In an interview with the Ballymena Times, Paisley stated "None of this money goes to me as MP ... They are legitimate expenses signed off by IPSA and paid directly by the Parliament".

He had the second-highest expenses claim in the 2013–14 financial year.

For the 2014–15 financial year, he was again the second-highest claimant, receiving £227,000 in expenses.

Following his suspension, the Recall of MPs Act 2015 was invoked for the first time since it received Royal Assent.

However, the resulting recall petition—the first in British parliamentary history—was signed by only 9.4% of registered voters, below the 10% threshold to trigger a by-election.

Paisley strongly supported "Vote Leave" in the 2016 Brexit referendum, and was a supporter of the Eurosceptic campaign Leave Means Leave.

While rejecting calls by Republican party Sinn Féin for a referendum in Northern Ireland on a unified Ireland, he advised his constituents to get a Republic of Ireland passport if they were eligible.

In 2018 Paisley was suspended from the House of Commons for 30 sitting days, beginning on 4 September 2018, because he broke paid advocacy rules by receiving hospitality from the Sri Lankan government without declaring that to the Commons.

Paisley's membership of the DUP was suspended between 24 July and 18 September 2018, during internal investigations by the party into his conduct.

In 2019, Paisley helped JCB heir Jo Bamford purchase Wrightbus, the financially troubled manufacturer of London's famous double-decker buses.

Jeff Wright, then-owner of Wrightbus, publicly complained of Paisley's alleged interference into the negotiations of the sale of Wrightbus to Bamford.

Once the purchase was complete, Bamford publicly praised Paisley for his help.

On 12 October 2019 Paisley wrote an op-ed in the Belfast Telegraph in which he praised Bamford and thanked him for buying Wrightbus.

In September 2020, Paisley was fined £1,300 (€1,400) by the Electoral Commission for accepting a total of £2,600 from two local councils to purchase tables at a fund-raising event at the Tullyglass hotel in Ballymena in September 2017.

Paisley also agreed to pay back the money.