Sir Cyril Irvine Patnick, known as Irvine Patnick, OBE (born 29 October 1929)[1] is a British businessman and former Conservative Party politician.
He was educated in Sheffield at the Central Technical School followed by Sheffield Polytechnic.[citation needed] A building contractor, Irvine Patnick entered politics as a member of Sheffield City Council.[citation needed] He was elected as Member of Parliament for Sheffield Hallam in 1987. During his time as an MP he was a Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury and deputy Chairman of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link Select Committee.[citation needed] He left politics after he lost his seat in the 1997 general election to the Liberal Democrat Richard Allan.
Patnick was one of the sources for The Sun newspaper's notorious coverage of the Hillsborough disaster. Sun editor Kelvin Mackenzie later said of his coverage "It was a fundamental mistake. The mistake was I believed what an MP said."[2]
Patnick is on the Right-wing of the Conservative Party. He was against sanctions on apartheid South Africa, voted to reintroduce the death penalty, strongly supported Section 28 and, in a similar vein, opposed reducing the age of consent for homosexuals. He coined the phrase "People's Republic of South Yorkshire" in reference to the hard left policies of the Sheffield City Council under the direction of David Blunkett.[citation needed]
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