Robert Shirley, 13th Earl Ferrers

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Robert Washington Shirley, 13th Earl Ferrers (born 8 June 1929) is British Conservative politician and member of the House of Lords as one of the remaining hereditary peers. He is one of the few people to serve in the governments of five different Prime Ministers.

Lord Ferrers was the eldest child and only son of Robert Shirley, 12th Earl Ferrers and succeeded to become 13th Earl Ferrers in 1954 on the death of his father, and consequently was allowed to sit in the House of Lords. He served as a House of Lords whip from 1962 until 1964 under both Harold Macmillan and Alec Douglas-Home. When the Conservatives were returned to power under Edward Heath, he once again served as a House of Lords whip from 1971 to 1973, then serving as a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food at the beginning of 1974.

When the Conservatives were returned to power under Margaret Thatcher in 1979, Lord Ferrers returned to MAFF, this time as a Minister of State. He left office in 1983, and appears to have returned to the backbenches in the Lords. In 1990 with the rise of John Major to power, he returned to government service as a Minister of State at the Home Office, and in 1994 moved to the Department of Trade and Industry, where he remained until 1995 when he left the government payroll, presumably for the last time.

With the passage of the House of Lords Act 1999, Ferrers along with almost all other hereditary peers lost his automatic right to sit in the House of Lords. He was however elected as one of the 90 elected hereditary peers to remain in the House of Lords pending completion of House of Lords reform.

He was made a Privy Counsellor in 1982.