Philip Bushill-Matthews (born 15 January 1943 in Droitwich) is a former British politician. He was Conservative Party Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the West Midlands. Biography At Oxford University he became President of the O.U. Broadcasting Society, and Secretary of the O.U. Dramatic Society (OUDS) in succession to Michael York, with whom he acted in Braham Murray's touring productions of A Man for All Seasons and Ionesco's Rhinoceros. After graduating he joined Unilever as a Graduate Trainee, spending much of his career at Birds Eye, becoming the youngest director of Birds Eye Wall's Ltd in 1981 at the age of 38. Overall he spent some thirty years in food manufacturing running businesses in the UK, Portugal and the Netherlands. Unhappy about the general lack of business experience among politicians from all parties he decided to enter politics himself and was elected to the European Parliament representing his home region of the West Midlands in 1999. He was then re-elected for a second five-year term in 2004, this time as head of the Conservative regional list. In addition to his position as MEP, he was a former leader of the Conservative group in Brussels. In his first term, as a member of the Environment and Public Health Committee he played an important role in negotiating amendments to the Chocolate Directive, which would finally enable British dairy milk chocolate to be sold throughout the EU. Meanwhile, fed up with the response from the Labour Government back home to the continued boycott of British beef by France for blatantly protectionist reasons, he joined ten other colleagues in a demonstration in Paris in autumn 1999. They carried a banner with the slogan 'Marie Antoinette said "Let them eat cake", British Conservative MEPs say "Let them eat British beef".' He was appointed Conservative Spokesman for Employment & Social Affairs immediately following his first election as an MEP, and held this position for ten years. In 2007 he was also elected Co-ordinator for Employment and Social Affairs for the Group of the European People's Party and European Democrats. His aim was to ensure that EU legislation was proportionate and realistic, and employment opportunities helped not hindered in the process. He was instrumental in preserving the UK individual opt-out from the Working Time Directive and promoting Corporate Social Responsibility as voluntary. German MEPs called him Philip the Fighter because of his tenacity in persuading colleagues