New Forest West.

A veteran Conservative backbencher with 28 years in the Commons, Swayne votes with his party on every recorded division -- a 100% alignment rate -- and his recent activity reflects straightforward opposition frontbench positions: backing amendments critical of Labour's King's Speech, supporting the procedural block on steel nationalisation, and opposing the carry-over of the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill. There are no rebel votes and no breaks from the Conservative line. The most striking coverage in the data is older: in 2020 and 2021, BBC reports gave him two of his lowest constituency scores on record, for comments about George Floyd protests and for refusing to apologise over Covid misinformation claims. Recent local coverage is markedly different in tone -- he challenged the Environment Agency's Hurst Spit coastal management proposals as "bonkers", and visited a Ukraine volunteer charity hub in the constituency.

His parliamentary participation sits at 75%, a few points below the Commons average. His speeches -- 285 contributions across 194 debates -- skew heavily toward economy and jobs, defence, and fiscal policy, with a notable volume on social care and crime. Stance data shows him among the strongest opponents of tax increases (93% aligned) and among the most pro-business (90%) and pro-parliamentary-scrutiny (86%) Conservative MPs. He votes less often with his party on Lords reform than the Conservative average, running 13 percentage points higher on that measure.

Swayne sits on the Panel of Chairs, which means he periodically chairs Westminster Hall and committee debates rather than participating in them. His deviation from party norms on Lords reform is modest but consistent. News sentiment over the past 90 days averages zero across 91 articles, suggesting broadly neutral local coverage with no dominant positive or negative thread. Older controversies from 2020--21 remain the most high-profile items in the dataset.