John Horam

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John Rhodes Horam (born 7 March 1939, Preston) is a politician in the United Kingdom, and currently sits as the Conservative Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Orpington.

He was educated at St Catharine's College, Cambridge where he studied economics. He was a features writer for the Financial Times and The Economist, and a founder of CRU, a commodities analysis and consulting company.

He was first elected as an MP at the 1970 general election as a member of the Labour Party, and served as a Parliamentary secretary in the Department of Transport under Bill Rodgers in the Callaghan government. Horam was one of the first to leave the Labour Party for the SDP in 1981, having been increasingly uneasy with the leftward direction that Labour had been veering in. Horam lost his seat in the 1983 general election.

Horam joined the Conservative Party shortly before the 1987 election and was elected to Parliament from Orpington, as a Conservative in 1992 with a majority of 12,935 votes. In 1994, Horam was appointed to be a junior minister under John Major in the Office of Public Service and Science. Soon afterwards, Horam made a lateral move to the Department of Health (United Kingdom) where he served as a junior minister for the duration of the Major Government. Horam gained some notoriety during the 1997 general election when he was the first member of the Major Government to come out publicly against joining a single currency. In opposition, Horam served as the first Chairman of the House Environmental Audit Select Committee from 1997-2004. In the 2005 general election, he increased his majority to 4,947, a significant increase over his narrow victory of only 269 votes in 2001 over Liberal Democrat Chris Maines.

Horam is the only MP to have sat in the House of Commons as a member of three different parties since the Second World War. In addition, he is the only one of the 29 MPs who joined in SDP in 1981 and 1982 who still is a Member of Parliament.

[edit] External links

• [1] official site
• Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: John Horam MP
• TheyWorkForYou.com - John Horam MP

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Harry Randall	Member of Parliament for Gateshead West 1970–1983	Succeeded by constituency abolished
Preceded by Ivor Stanbrook	Member of Parliament for Orpington 1992 – present	Incumbent