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Robert James MacGillivray Neill (born 24 June 1952) is a British politician and barrister. He has been Conservative Party member of the London Assembly for Bexley and Bromley since 2000, and was elected as Member of Parliament for Bromley and Chislehurst in a by-election on 29 June 2006.

Neill attended Abbs Cross Technical High School, Abbs Cross Lane, Hornchurch, and took at degree at The London School of Economics. He was later a councillor in the London Borough of Havering, served as Greater London Council member for Romford 1985-86. He previously stood for the Dagenham parliamentary constituency in 1983, at the age of 30, coming within 2,997 votes of winning the historically Labour seat from Bryan Gould MP. He also stood for election in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in 1994 and 1998.

Neill was first elected to the London Assembly in the 2000 assembly election. He served as Leader of the Conservative Group on the Assembly from 2000/2 and again from 2004.

He is also a member of the EU's Committee of the Regions[1], and a member of the European People's Party - European Democrats. A pro-European, he supported former Conservative Chancellor Kenneth Clarke in both of his bids for the leadership of the Conservative Party.

A Freemason, he is a member of the Greater London Lodge. [2] His partner is Southend Conservative Councillor Daphne White [3]

On 3 June 2006 he was adopted as the Conservative candidate for the Bromley and Chislehurst by-election which took place on 29 June 2006. His selection by the local Conservative Association raised eyebrows, as new leader David Cameron had pressed for an "A-List" candidate, to help present Cameron's vision of the new Conservative Party. The Parliamentary constituency forms a part of Neill's London Assembly constituency. He stated at his selection that he would not resign his London Assembly seat as the resultant by-election, which would see around 400,000 voters go to the polls, would be unduly expensive.

A few questions were raised about Neill's position as a non-executive director of the North East London Strategic Health Authority, which fell foul of the House of Commons Disqualification Act of 1975. His response was that, because the body was due to be abolished before he would have had the chance to take his seat in Westminster, any such arguments were immaterial. [4]

Neill won the by-election by just 633 votes, compared to the 13,342 majority achieved by his predecessor at the 2005 general election. Factors contributing to this were assumed by commentators to include a substantial drop in the turnout (down from 64.8 to 40.18%), the drop disproportionally hitting the Conservative vote, the presence of a high-profile UKIP candidate, a very large defection of votes to the Liberal Democrat candidate Ben Abbots - Labour ended up coming fourth, after UKIP - and a robust and occasionally personal campaign by the Liberal Democrats. In his acceptance speech Neill criticised "a minority of candidates" (which was assumed to be specifically criticising the Liberal Democrat candidate) for their ad hominem attacks on him. These included proven statements that he had three jobs [5] [6] [7] and did not live in the borough.

• Biography from the London Assembly