Uxbridge Tory MP who started petition for local fish and chip shop voted against one in 2019

The Tory MP who has launched a campaign to bring a fish and chip shop to part of his constituency voted against a similar plan several years ago, it has emerged.

Steve Tuckwell, the MP for Uxbridge & South Ruislip and Hillingdon Councillor for South Ruislip, got around 3.5 million views in less than eight hours when he uploaded a short video to social media.

In it, he said he wanted to bring a chip shop to the centre of Uxbridge because it would “support our high street, it will support business and it will help the local economy”.

But former Hillingdon Labour councillor Kerri Prince tweeted a link to a planning meeting from 2019 where Mr Tuckwell had voted down a similar plan.

She said: “Steve was in attendance at the Hillingdon Council planning meeting in which they heard an application for a fish and chip shop in Uxbridge town centre.“He voted against it.”

The minutes of the meeting do not specifically mention Mr Tuckwell’s vote but state the rejecting the application was passed unanimously.

The campaign had already been criticised with several social media users querying where exactly the petition will be presented to in order to encourage the creation of a private business.

Mr Tuckwell’s Labour opponent at the next election, Danny Beales, said he had been canvassing on Thursday evening and heard from no-one “concerned about the lack of another fish & chip shop”.

He added he had “countless conversations with families worried about the cost of living, NHS, and library closure.”

Mr Tuckwell beat Mr Beales in last July’s by-election that was held after the resignation of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson as the area’s MP.

He held the seat with a reduced majority of 495 votes with some people attributing his success to the unpopularity of the Ultra Low Emission Zone and London mayor Sadiq Khan’s plan to expand it into the borough.