Norman Baker

Norman John Baker (born 26 July 1957) is a Liberal Democrat politician in the United Kingdom who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Lewes in East Sussex from the 1997 general election until his defeat in 2015.

Baker was born in Aberdeen, but his family moved to Hornchurch in east London in 1968.

He was educated at the Royal Liberty School in Gidea Park, near Romford, and at Royal Holloway College, University of London, graduating in 1978 with a BA degree in German & History.

Outside of politics Baker was a regional director for Our Price Records for five years from 1978.

Baker joined the Liberal Party in 1981 while living in Islington and in his memoir he described himself as a 'sleeping' party member save for one canvassing session in six years.

He worked at Malling Street Service Station, Lewes, from 1983 to 1985.

In 1985 he joined the then Ecology Party before seeking his first council seat in Ouse Valley ward of Lewes District Council in 1987.

He taught English as a foreign language from 1985 to 1997, with a spell as a Liberal Democrat environment researcher in the House of Commons in 1989–90.

Two years later in 1989 was also elected to the local county council of East Sussex.

He became the Leader of Lewes District Council in 1991, a position he held until his election as an MP in 1997.

Baker contested Lewes at the 1992 general election, but the sitting Conservative Party MP Tim Rathbone retained the seat.

He stood again at the 1997 election, and this time gained the seat with a majority of 1,300 votes over Rathbone, becoming Lewes's first non-Conservative MP since 1874.

Baker prided himself on "uncovering scandals and conflicts of interest among MPs and the government".

His consistent questioning of Peter Mandelson may have helped lead to Mandelson's second resignation from government.

He also raised issues about Lord Birt and his role as Tony Blair's adviser.

In 1997, The Times columnist Matthew Parris described him as a "classic House of Commons bore", and in the Commons in 2002, Labour MP Stephen Pound likened his speeches to "root canal surgery without anaesthetic", but Parris added in 2001 "You underestimate him at your peril. He has a habit of being right."

In October 2001 he won a test case in the High Court, when the National Security Appeals panel ruled that the Data Protection Act required the security service MI5 to allow him access to information which he believed the security service holds on him, the first time this had happened in the 92-year history of MI5.

In 2001 he was named "Inquisitor of the Year" in The Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year Awards, and in February 2002 he won the Channel 4 Opposition MP of the Year Award.

Baker is regarded as coming from the left-wing of the party, and until losing his seat was a member of the Beveridge Group within the Liberal Democrats.

A staunch republican, he is also well known for his vocal support for animal rights groups, and he is a strong proponent for greater protection of animals under law.

In the 2001–05 Parliament, Baker was a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, and was appointed as Liberal Democrat Environment spokesman in 2002, a post he held until his resignation in 2006 following the election of Sir Menzies Campbell as party leader.

After compiling figures in 2002, which revealed that the government's fleet of ministerial cars had grown to its largest ever size, he began in January 2005 to campaign to force disclosure of the details of MPs' expenses under the Freedom of Information Act, finally succeeding in February 2007.

His success enabled The Daily Telegraph to publish details of his own expense claims, which included £3,000 for office rental.

As Environment spokesman in May 2005, he joined with two former environment ministers, the Labour MP Michael Meacher and the Conservative John Gummer, to table a cross-party Early Day Motion No. 178 in support of a Climate Change Bill drafted by Friends of the Earth.

The motion called for a Bill to be "brought forward in this Parliament so that annual cuts in carbon dioxide emissions of 3 per cent can be delivered in a framework that includes regular reporting and new scrutiny and corrective processes" and attracted 412 signatures.

Baker also opposed nuclear power, describing it as "hopelessly uneconomic", and warning that new nuclear power stations "would generate vast quantities of nuclear waste and divert essential funding away from energy efficiency and renewable sources of energy."

He asked two parliamentary questions of the Ministry of Defence in 2006 and 2007 on the subject of what the Ministry calls "unexplained aerial phenomena" including: "To ask the Secretary of State for Defence whether his Department's unidentified flying objects project is extant; and if he will make a statement."

Baker announced on 19 May 2006 that he had decided to step down from the Liberal Democrats' front bench to pursue a quest to establish the truth behind the death in 2003 of David Kelly, an expert in biological warfare employed by the Ministry of Defence and a former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq.

Kelly's discussion with BBC Today programme journalist Andrew Gilligan about the British government's dossier on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq inadvertently caused a major political scandal.

Kelly had been found dead days after appearing before the Parliamentary committee investigating the scandal.

The Hutton Inquiry, a public inquiry into the circumstances surrounding his death, ruled that he had committed suicide and that Kelly had not in fact said some of the things attributed to him by Gilligan.

Baker said that Hutton had "blatantly failed to get to the bottom of matters", and that "the more I look into it the less convinced I am by the explanation and the more unanswered questions appear which ought to have been addressed properly by the Hutton inquiry or by the coroner."

In July that year, Baker claimed that data had been wiped from the hard drive on one of his computers.

Although some news reports suggested that this related to evidence showing Kelly's death was not a suicide, Baker maintained that none of his research on Kelly had been stored on that particular machine.

He returned to the front bench in July 2007, when he was appointed as Liberal Democrat spokesman on the Cabinet Office and the Duchy of Lancaster.

In December 2007, after the election of Nick Clegg as party leader, Baker (who had supported Clegg in the leadership contest) returned to the front bench as spokesman on Transport.

Following the 2008 Camp for Climate Action at Kingsnorth power station, Baker called for an investigation into police tactics, saying he had witnessed unnecessarily aggressive policing and unprovoked violence against peaceful protesters during the event.

In May 2010 he was appointed as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Transport.

On 7 October 2013, Baker was promoted to Minister of State at the Home Office in the coalition government of 2010–15.

He resigned from his role at the Home Office on 3 November 2014.