David Anthony Freud, Baron Freud (born June 1950) is a British journalist, businessman and welfare adviser and is a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. He is a great grandson of Sigmund Freud, and son of Annette Krarup and Walter Freud.
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Freud was educated at Whitgift School, an independent school in Croydon in south London, followed by Merton College at the University of Oxford.
Freud first worked for the Financial Times as a journalist, where he spent four years writing the Lex column. In 1983 he was hired by the firm then known as Rowe & Pitman. He worked on more than 50 deals, raising more than £50bn in 19 countries. Many were high profile, including the flotations of Eurotunnel and EuroDisney, while he orchestrated the rescue of the Channel Tunnel railway link and National Air Traffic Services. His role in the deals, earned him a great deal of publicity and occasionally criticism. By 2003, Freud had become the vice-chairman of investing banking at the firm, now known as UBS AG. He retired early at the age 53, claiming boredom with the City. He later served as the chief executive of the Portland Trust, which aims to promote the peace process through economic means in Palestine and Israel.
In late 2006, Freud was appointed by the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to provide an independent review of the British welfare to work system. His recommendations called for expanded private sector involvement in the welfare system for substantial resources to be found to help those on Incapacity Benefit back into economic activity and for single parents to be required to work earlier. While his recommendations on single parents were immediately adopted and speeded up, when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister in June 2007, other restructuring measures were soft-pedalled. He was later rehired as an adviser to the government when James Purnell was appointed Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in 2008. He worked to produce a white paper, published in December 2008, which would require most people receiving benefits either to participate in some form of employment or prepare formally to find work later.
In February 2009, Freud joined the opposition Conservative Party. He was given a life peerage as Baron Freud, of Eastry in the county of Kent, and became a shadow minister for welfare in the House of Lords.[1]