David Heathcoat-Amory

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David Philip Heathcoat-Amory, MP (born March 21, 1949) British politician, accountant and farmer. He is the Conservative Member of Parliament for Wells.

Contents

[edit] Education and professional life

David Heathcoat-Amory is the son of British Army Brigadier Roderick Heathcoat-Amory, MC (son of Sir Ian Heathcoat-Amory, 2nd Baronet) and the great-nephew of Harold Macmillan's Chancellor of the Exchequer Viscount Amory. He was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford University, where he received a MA in PPE. He was President of the Oxford University Conservative Association. He qualified as an accountant in 1974 and joined Price Waterhouse as a chartered accountant. In 1980 he was appointed as the assistant finance director of the British Technology Group in 1980 where he remained until he was elected to parliament. He is also a farmer.

[edit] Political career

He contested the London Borough of Brent seat at Brent South at the 1979 General Election but was defeated by the sitting Labour MP Laurence Pavitt by 11,616 votes. He was elected to the House of Commons at the 1983 General Election for the Somerset seat of Wells, whose sitting MP Robert Boscawen had decided to move to Somerton and Frome following boundary changes. Heathcoat-Amory held the seat with a majority of 6,575 and has remained the MP there since.

In parliament he was appointed as the Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury John Moore in 1985, and was also the PPS to his successor from 1986 Norman Lamont. Following the 1987 General Election he became the PPS to the Home Secretary Douglas Hurd until he was promoted to the government of Margaret Thatcher as an Assistant Government Whip in 1988. He was promoted to become a Lord Commissioner to the Treasury and Government Whip in 1989. Later in the year he became the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for the Environment, until moved by the new prime minister John Major in the same position at the Department of Energy in 1990. He was appointed as the Treasurer of the Household (Deputy Chief Whip) following the 1992 General Election and was the Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1993. He was appointed as the Paymaster General in 1994 where he served until resigning from the government in 1996 over the single European currency. He became a member of the Privy Council in 1996.

In 1997 he joined the shadow cabinet of William Hague as the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and was the Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry from 2000. He left the frontbench on the election of Iain Duncan Smith as the leader of the Conservative Party in 2001. He was a member of the Treasury Select Committee from 2004 until he was briefly, in 2005, a spokesman on work and pensions under the leadership of Michael Howard, but returned to the backbenches later in the year with David Cameron at the helm. He serves as the chairman of the all party group on the British Museum; the vice chair of the group on astronomy and space environment; and the secretary of the group on boxing.

From late 2001 to July 2003 he was one of the two British parliamentary delegates to the Convention on the Future of Europe, which drafted the European Constitution. He is well known for his strongly Eurosceptic views, and was through the work of the Convention a fierce opponent of the official drafts being prepared by the federalist presidium of the Convention.

[edit] Personal life

He enjoys angling and growing trees. He married Linda Adams on February 4 1978 in north Hampshire. They have a son and a daughter (born September 1988) and they live in the constituency at the village of Pilton[1] (which is the home of the Glastonbury Festival). His younger son, Matthew, committed suicide at their home in Perthshire in 2001.[2]

His brother Edward Heathcoat-Amory writes for the Daily Mail and has written for The Spectator. Edward is married to Alice Thomson who works for the Daily Telegraph.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ <Biography on Heathcoat-Amory's web site>
  2. ^ <bbc.co.uk report, 17 August 2001

[edit] Publications

  • A Single European Currency: Why the United Kingdom Must Say No by David Heathcoat-Amory, 1996, Nelson & Pollard Publishing ISBN 1-874607-11-7
  • A Market Under Threat: How the European Union Could Destroy the British Art Market by David Heathcoat-Amory, 1998, Centre for Policy Studies ISBN 1-897969-74-0
  • The European Constitution by David Heathcoat-Amory, 2003, CPS

[edit] External links

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
Robert Boscawen		 Member of Parliament for Wells
1983 – present		 Incumbent
Political offices
Preceded by
Alastair Goodlad		 Treasurer of the Household
1992–1993		 Succeeded by
Greg Knight
Preceded by
Sir John Cope		 Paymaster-General
1994–1996		 Succeeded by
David Willetts
Languages