Barry Gardiner

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Barry in the Andorran Pyrenees with a few of his US/Dutch hiking friends

Barry Strachan Gardiner (born March 10, 1957) is a British politician. He is the Labour Member of Parliament for Brent North and is the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Barry Gardiner was born in Glasgow, Scotland to a doctor mother and was educated at the Glasgow High School and the Haileybury and Imperial Service College in Hertford before attending the University of St Andrews where he received a master's degree. He was awarded a Kennedy Memorial Trust scholarship to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1983, returning to research at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge for four years from 1984, and he has been described as "one of the best educated and most internationally experienced MPs." (Andrew Roth, The Guardian). He worked as a senior partner in shipping insurance and arbitration for ten years before his election to parliament.

He was elected as a councillor to the Cambridge City Council in 1988 becoming the mayor of the city in 1992 and he was the youngest mayor in Cambridge's 800 year history. He left the council in 1994. He was selected to contest the London seat of Brent North at the 1997 General Election and he defeated the sitting veteran Conservative MP Rhodes Boyson by 4,019 and has held the seat since. He made his maiden speech on July 4, 1997.[1]

In the House of Commons he served on a number of select committees before he became the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of State at the Home Office Beverley Hughes in 2002. He became a member of the Tony Blair government in 2004 when he was appointed the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Northern Ireland Office, moving to the same position at the Department for Trade and Industry following the 2005 General Election. He moved to DEFRA at the May 2006 reshuffle.

He is the chairman of the Labour Friends of India, and has lectured at the Academy of National Economy in Moscow. He has been married to Caroline Anne Smith since 1979 and has three sons and a daughter.