Tony Baldry

Sir Antony Brian Baldry, (born 10 July 1950) is a British Conservative Party politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Banbury from 1983 to 2015.

Born in 1950, Baldry was educated at Leighton Park School, a Quaker school, and the University of Sussex where he read law.

During his university years, Baldry was actively involved in student politics and, whilst attending Sussex, took the Students' Union to the High Court on the grounds that the Students' Union was making ultra vires payments out of Student Union funds to various political organisations.

The case of Baldry v Feintuck is notable in legal history for defining the legal status of students' unions for the first time.

In 1971, whilst at university, Baldry joined the Sussex Yeomanry.

On 19 May 1974, he was commissioned into the Royal Artillery, Territorial Army (TA), as a second lieutenant (on probation).

He was given the service number 498590.

His commission and rank were confirmed on 19 May 1974.

Baldry began his political career in the February 1974 general election, serving as personal assistant to Maurice Macmillan, then Chief Secretary to the Treasury and in the October 1974 general election, he was personal assistant to Margaret Thatcher.

In 1975, Baldry was called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn and became a common lawyer, joining the Oxford and Midlands Circuit.

When Thatcher later became Leader of the Conservative Party in 1975, Baldry joined her Private Office, working as the link between Thatcher and the "Britain in Europe Campaign" and the "Yes" Campaign, for the 1975 EU referendum.

He was promoted to lieutenant on 19 May 1976, and to captain on 18 February 1981.

Baldry was active in the European movement and won the Robert Schumann Silver Medal in 1978 for contributions to Europe.

Baldry was first selected as a parliamentary candidate for the Thurrock constituency for the 1979 general election where he secured one of the largest swings to the Conservative Party, reducing a 19,000 Labour majority at the last general election to 6,400.

Following the retirement of veteran Banbury Conservative MP Neil Marten, Baldry successfully contested the seat at the 1983 general election and was elected to Parliament with a majority of 13,025.

From 1985 to 1990, Baldry was a Parliamentary Private Secretary, successively to Lynda Chalker and John Wakeham, who was leader of the House of Commons.

He retired from the TA on 1 April 1990 with the rank of acting major.

In January 1990 Margaret Thatcher made Baldry a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department of Energy, where he helped John Wakeham privatise the electricity industry.

Baldry was one of the last of those made a Minister by Margaret Thatcher still to be in the House of Commons.

Following the election of John Major as prime minister in November 1990, Michael Heseltine asked that Baldry move to the Department for the Environment, where he stayed for four years covering every aspect of the department's work including housing, planning, Local Government and construction.

In 1994 Baldry moved to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to cover in the House of Commons for Lynda Chalker who was the Minister for Overseas Development but in the House of Lords.

As a consequence, he spoke for the Government on International Development in the House of Commons.

In 1995 he was promoted to the rank of Minister of State at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food – where he had to grapple with the twin problems of BSE and increasingly unpopular EU fisheries policies – a position he held until the fall of the Major government in 1997.

His civil servants nicknamed him 'Baldrick'.

In January 1997, Baldry accepted from Sarosh Zaiwalla (a prominent London solicitor), a £5,000 personal loan, on which he paid interest.

Baldry gave Lord Feldman (Chairman of the Conservative Party in London at the time) a letter of support for a recommendation of a public honour that Lord Feldman was making on behalf of Sarosh Zaiwalla.

It was later held by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards that in that reference or separately, Baldry should have declared that he was at the time a beneficiary of a loan from Sarosh Zaiwalla.

Baldry was consequently ordered to apologise to the House over the incident.

From 2001 to 2005, Baldry chaired the House of Commons Select Committee on International Development.

In January 2005 Baldry wrote to Hilary Benn, Secretary for International Development, on behalf of Milestone Trading, a British company involved in diamond mining in Sierra Leone.

He was one of eleven MPs to volunteer for the VSO's project PolVol in 2008.

He is on the council of governors of Chatham House.

Since the summer of 2009, Baldry had chaired the Conservative Party's Commission on Human Rights

On 21 June 2010, Baldry was appointed Second Church Estates Commissioner, with responsibility for answering questions in the House in a manner similar to questions to ministers on the work of the Church Commissioners.

In the 2010 general election Baldry was re-elected with an increased majority, of 18,227 votes.

Following the 2010 general election, he became co-chair of the APPG on Agriculture and Food for Development along with Lord Cameron of Dillington, and joined the Ecclesiastical Select Committee.

Baldry announced his decision to stand down as an MP at the May 2015 general election on 1 September 2014.

Following his retirement from the House of Commons in 2015 he was appointed as the chair of the Church Buildings Council succeeding Anne Sloman.

He stepped down on 11 July 2019 and was replaced by the vice chair Jennie Page

Tony Baldry is a member of the Council of the Overseas Development Institute, was Vice-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Overseas Development (Apgood), a Trustee of Friends of Africa, which is a UK-based charity, and a Trustee of Afghan Action, a UK-based charity working in Afghanistan.