Surgeon Commander Andrew William Murrison (born 24 April 1961) is a British doctor, naval officer and Conservative Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for South West Wiltshire, previously Westbury, since 2001. He served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence People and Families from October 2022 to July 2024.
Murrison has held a variety of positions within the British government, including Minister for International Security Strategy, Minister of State for Northern Ireland, and then Minister of State for International Development and the Middle East. In Parliament, he chaired the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee from July 2017 to May 2019.
Andrew Murrison was born on 24 April 1961 in Colchester, the son of William Gordon Murrison RD and his wife Marion Horn. He grew up in Harwich, where he attended Harwich School, and the Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth.
Having been awarded a Royal Navy scholarship, Murrison qualified as a doctor from the University of Bristol's medical school in 1984 with the degrees of MB ChB. He was promoted to MD in 1996, the year he graduated from Cambridge with a Diploma in Public Health.
Murrison was commissioned into the Medical Branch of the Royal Navy, and on 1 August 1985 was confirmed in the rank of Surgeon Lieutenant. On 31 December 1997, he was promoted to Surgeon Commander.
He served as a medical officer based at Fareham and in 2000 retired with that rank.
During his naval career, for the purpose of qualifying as a general practitioner Murrison worked as a research registrar at Southampton General Hospital. He also spent a year as a postgraduate student at Hughes Hall, Cambridge. On 28 October 2000, he entered the Royal Naval Reserve as a Surgeon Commander.
From 2000, he worked as a general practitioner locum in Wiltshire and as a consultant in occupational health at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital.
In 2003, as a naval reserve officer, Murrison served in Iraq for a six-month tour of duty.
Before entering full-time politics, Murrison was a member of the Bow Group, an assistant to Sir Peter Lloyd, and then from 1999 to 2000 an assistant to Lord Freeman, whose role at Conservative Central Office was screening potential parliamentary candidates.
At the 2001 general election, Murrison was elected to Parliament as the Conservative MP for Westbury with 42.1% of the vote and a majority of 5,294.
In the 2001 Conservative leadership election, Murrison supported Michael Portillo.
In 2004, in a free vote, Murrison voted against the bill to ban foxhunting and hare coursing which became the Hunting Act 2004.
Murrison was re-elected as MP for Westbury at the 2005 general election with an increased vote share of 44.5% and an increased majority of 5,346. After the election, he was appointed as shadow defence minister.
In 2005, he spoke in parliament against a proposed European military union, saying "The threat that the proposed Euro force might pose to one of the most successful post-war organisations, NATO, and to our symbiotic relationship with the United States, has surely not been adequately explored".
In a Commons divisions in 2007 on a number of House of Lords reform options, Murrison voted for options 7 and 8, proposing a 100% elected House of Lords, including the removal of all remaining hereditary peers, and against options 4 and 5, which proposed a partly elected and partly appointed upper chamber.
He chaired the All Party Parliamentary Group on Clinical Leadership and Management, and was a member of the "Cardiac Risk in the Young All Party Parliamentary Group".
With effect from the 2010 general election, Murrison's constituency of Westbury was abolished and replaced with South West Wiltshire. He was elected as MP for South West Wiltshire with 51.7% of the vote and a majority of 10,367. The election led to the formation of the Cameron–Clegg coalition government.