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Stewart Maxwell

Stewart Maxwell (born December 24, 1963 in Glasgow) is a Member of the Scottish Parliament for the West of Scotland, being elected as a Scottish National Party (SNP), Additional Members System member at the 2003 election. Maxwell attended King's Park Secondary School before graduating from Glasgow College of Technology with a BA Honours Social Sciences. He worked for Strathclyde Fire Brigade between 1993 and 2003 before being elected.

After his election in 2003 Maxwell became the Deputy Convener of the Parliament's Justice 1 Committee and a member of the Subordinate Legislation Committee. He transferred from Justice 1 to Justice 2 Committee in 2004 and was also appointed to the post of SNP spokesperson on Public Health and the Shadow Deputy Minister for Health. In 2006 Maxwell was promoted to the Shadow Cabinet when he became the Shadow Minister for Sport, Culture & Media. He currently sits on the Parliament's Enterprise and Culture Committee and the Subordinate Legislation Committee.

Maxwell is best known for being the architect of the ban on smoking in enclosed places in Scotland. He laid a motion in the Scottish Parliament stating that he intended to bring forward a bill to ban smoking in public places in July 2003 and went on to introduce the Bill to ban tobacco smoking in enclosed public places in February 2004, as perhaps befits a former employee of Strathclyde Fire Brigade. The Scottish Executive at first opposed this proposal, but were eventually forced to accept the idea after it received widespread support. They eventually published their own bill which was passed on June 30th 2005 and the ban came into effect on March 26th 2006.

For the last few years he has also been campaigning on knife crime and has made various proposals to tackle this issue in Scotland, including the mandatory reporting of knife attacks by hospitals to the police and the use of hand-held metal detectors at the doors of some pubs and clubs. He successfully moved an amendment to the Police, Public Order and Criminal Justice Bill which doubled the maximum sentence for carrying a knife in public.

Maxwell was a member of the SNPs National Executive Committee as well as serving as the Vice Convenor in charge of Publicity during 2003-2004. Maxwell is a member of six Parliamentary cross party groups; Tobacco Control, Sport, Contemporary Scottish Music Industry, Culture and Media, Cancer and Food.

In June 2006 the SNP held their OMOV ballot of all Party members to determine the order of their candidates on the regional lists for the 2007 election. Maxwell, who was third on the SNP list for the West of Scotland in 2003 was elected to first place on the SNP list for 2007.

In November 2006 Maxwell was made Honorary Vice-President of the Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland for his work on the introduction of the ban on smoking in public places.

He is married with one daughter.

• Scottish Parliament official website - Stewart Maxwell MSP
• Personal webiste of Stewart Maxwell, MSP
• Scottish National Party
• Scotsman - MSP Proposes Smoking Ban
• Sunday Times - MSP advocates Mandatory Reporting

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