Sevenoaks (UK Parliament constituency)

Sevenoaks
County constituency for the House of Commons
Boundary of Sevenoaks in Kent for the 2010 general election.
Location of Kent within England.
County	Kent
Electorate	69,925 (December 2010)
Current constituency
Created	1885
Member of parliament	Sir Michael Fallon (Conservative)
Number of members	One
Created from	West Kent
Overlaps
European Parliament constituency	South East England

Sevenoaks is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 1997 by Sir Michael Fallon, a Conservative, who has served as Secretary of State for Defence since 15 July 2014. It is considered a safe Conservative seat.

This constituency has existed since the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885.

With the exception of the one-year Parliament in 1923, the constituency has to date been a Conservative stronghold.

Sir Thomas Jewell Bennett before entering Parliament was a leader writer at The Standard and lived in India for many years, working at the Bombay Gazette before becoming both editor and principal proprietor of the Times of India. Bennett returned to England in 1901 and in 1910 unsuccessfully contested his first Parliamentary election, losing to Alfred Gelder at the time of David Lloyd George and H. H. Asquith's celebrated "People's Budget". He represented the seat for five years from 1918.

Higher in government in this period was Hilton Young, the Health Secretary between 1931 and 1935. The health portfolio at the time included responsibility for housing, including slum clearance and rehousing. Key items of legislation to which he contributed in this period were: the Town and Country Planning Act (1932) (which applied to all 'developable' land), the Housing Act (1935) (which laid down standards of accommodation) and the Restriction of Ribbon Development Act (1935) (which sought to consolidate urban development and restrict ribbon sprawl along major highways).