James Arbuthnot
James Norwich Arbuthnot, MP was born on the 4th August 1952 and is a British Conservative Party politician. He is the Member of Parliament (MP) for North East Hampshire. Between 2005 and 2014 he was Chairman of the Defence Select Committee.
James first entered Parliament in 1987 as MP for Wanstead & Woodford and since 1997 has represented North East Hampshire. He served as Opposition Chief Whip (1997-2001) and as Shadow Secretary of State for Trade (2003-05).
Political Career[edit]
In the 1987 general election Arbuthnot was elected to the safe Conservative seat of Wanstead and Woodford.
In 1988 he became the Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Archie Hamilton at the Ministry of Defence, and in 1990 became the PPS to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Peter Lilley. He entered the John Major government after the 1992 general election when he was made an assistant government whip. He was promoted in 1994 as the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Social Security. The following year he was promoted to Minister of State at the Ministry of Defence, where he remained until the end of the Major government in 1997.
Arbuthnot's seat of Wanstead and Woodford was abolished at the 1997 general election, and he found a new seat in North East Hampshire. In opposition, he was a member of William Hague's Shadow Cabinet as the party's Chief Whip until the 2001 general election when he returned to the backbenches. He was made a Member of the Privy Council in 1998.
Arbuthnot returned to the Shadow Cabinet under Michael Howard as Shadow Trade Secretary in 2003, but stood down after the 2005 general election. Since that election he has served as the chairman of the influential Defence Select Committee and was the chair of the special Select Committee set up to scrutinise the Bill that became the Armed Forces Act 2011.[7] He is a Senior Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute.
Arbuthnot is the Parliamentary Chairman of the Conservative Friends of Israel.[8] He is also a member of the Top Level Group of UK Parliamentarians for Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament and Non-proliferation, established in October 2009.
In June 2011 Arbuthnot announced that he would not contest the next general election.[12]
Education[edit]
He was educated at Wellesley House School in Broadstairs, Eton College, where he was Captain of School, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained a law degree in 1974. He worked as a barrister from 1975 until 1987 when he entered into his political career.
