 At the 1959 general election, he was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Maidstone, following in the footsteps of a 19th-century ancestor, also John Wells.He held the safe Conservative seat until his retirement at the 1987 general election, when his successor was the future minister Ann Widdecombe.Throughout his period as a Member of Parliament, Wells was a strong supporter of country interests and the local economy, on one occasion riding his horse through the streets of Westminster and on another loudly eating a Kentish apple during a speech by a Labour Minister of Agriculture, as a protest against the import of cheap, subsidised and, in his opinion, inferior imports from France.