John Horam

John Rhodes Horam, Baron Horam (born 7 March 1939) is a Conservative politician in the United Kingdom.

He went to the independent Silcoates School in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, where he was Head Boy, and won an Exhibition to St Catharine's College, Cambridge where he studied Economics, gaining an MA in 1960.

From 1960 to 1962 he was a market research officer with the York firm of Rowntree & Co. During his time at Rowntree's, he did the market research for the new product “After Eight” Thin Mints.

He then went into economic journalism, becoming a feature writer for the Financial Times and The Economist. Leaving journalism, he started, with a partner, a new company, CRU International Ltd, an international business consultancy specialising in minerals and metals.

He was also the first Chair of Circle Thirty Three Housing Association, now part of Clarion Housing.

Horam contested Folkestone and Hythe for Labour in the 1966 election, but lost to the incumbent, Albert Costain.

He was elected as the Labour MP for Gateshead West at the 1970 general election.

He was a Chair of The Manifesto Group of right wing Labour MPs and when James Callaghan become Prime Minister entered Government, in September 1976, as a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State to Bill Rodgers in the Department of Transport.

After Labour’s election defeat of 1979 he was a Labour Opposition spokesman on Economic Affairs.

He represented three parties in Parliament – originally Labour, he defected to the SDP on its foundation in 1981, then to the Conservatives in 1987 – and served as a Minister in both Labour and Conservative Governments.

Horam was one of the first to leave the Labour Party for the SDP in 1981, having become uneasy with the leftward direction of Labour.

From 1981 to 1983 he was SDP spokesman for Economic Affairs under Roy Jenkins.

In 1983, his constituency of Gateshead West having been abolished, he fought Newcastle Central, unsuccessfully, as an SDP candidate.

Horam joined the Conservative Party shortly before the 1987 election and in 1991 was selected as the Conservative candidate for Orpington, famous for the Liberal by-election victory when Harold Macmillan was Prime Minister.

He won the 1992 election with a majority of 12,935 over the Liberal Democrats.

Following election as a Conservative MP in 1992, Horam was appointed a member of the Public Accounts Committee.

In March 1994 Horam was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Office of Public Service and Science in the Cabinet Office.

In November 1995 he moved sideways to become Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Health.

Here he had 31 different areas of responsibility but had two particularly large policy areas: reorganising Community Health Councils and establishing the Private Finance Initiative in health.

This lasted until he was appointed a Minister in 1995.

When Tony Blair triumphed in 1997 Horam held the seat with a reduced majority.

He occupied this position until the Conservative defeat in the 1997 election.

He is the only MP in recent times who has served as a Minister for both major parties.

Following the Labour victory in 1997, he was elected the first Chair of the new Environmental Audit Committee, set up by the Labour government.

The main focus of the Committee was the emerging problem of climate change.

Horam gained some notoriety during the 1997 election when he became the first member of the Major government to come out publicly against joining a single currency.

In 2001 when William Hague was the Conservative leader he held on by only 269 votes.

He held this position until July 2003.

When he stood down a Commons motion praised him for his work.

During this time, as Chair of a Committee, Horam was a member of the Commons Liaison Committee, which, among other duties, took evidence from the Prime Minister three times a year.

In 2003 he was one of a handful of Conservative MPs who voted against Britain’s participation in the Iraq war.

From 2003 to 2008 he was an elected member of the Executive of the Conservative Backbench 1992 Committee.

Always interested in the nuts and bolts of democracy, he drafted the original "Equal Votes" legislation which stipulated that Parliamentary constituencies should be of roughly equal size.

In 2005 however he increased his majority to 4,947 over the longstanding Liberal Democrat candidate Chris Maines.

The seat has remained Conservative ever since.

Despite his constituency being only a short train journey from the House of Commons, Horam claimed expenses for the second home that he maintained there.

Following re-election in 2005, Horam was appointed a member of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, a position he held until 2010.

On 4 September 2013, he was created a working life peer as Baron Horam of Grimsargh in the County of Lancashire.

He is a founder and vice chair of the Common Sense Group of Conservative Parliamentarians.

Horam was born in Grimsargh in the city of Preston, Lancashire.