William Waldegrave, Baron Waldegrave of North Hill
William Arthur Waldegrave, Baron Waldegrave of North Hill,
PC (born
August 15,
1946), educated at
Corpus Christi College, Oxford and now a fellow of
All Souls College, Oxford is a
British Conservative politician who served in the
Cabinet from
1990 until
1997. He is now a
life peer. Lord Waldegrave is also the Chairman of the
Rhodes Trust.
He was elected to the
House of Commons as
MP for
Bristol West in 1979. He was regarded as a member of the "wet" or moderate tendency of the Conservative Party, and despite this progressed well from the backbenches in
Margaret Thatcher's government: He became a
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the
Department of Education and Science in 1981 before moving to the
Department of the Environment in 1983. He remained at Environment, becoming a
Minister of State in 1985, until 1988 when he became a Minister of State at the Foreign Office.
He was promoted to the cabinet as
Secretary of State for Health in November 1990, just days before Thatcher's resignation, and remained at the cabinet table throughout
John Major's time as
Prime Minister. He became
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the
Cabinet Office with responsibility for science in 1992,
Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in 1994 and
Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 1995.
After losing his Commons seat to
Valerie Davey in Labour's
1997 landslide, he entered the
House of Lords as Baron Waldegrave of North Hill, of Chewton Mendip in the County of Somerset in 1999.
Lord Waldegrave is the younger son of the
12th Earl Waldegrave, and a brother of the present
Earl. He is married to
Caroline Waldegrave, cookery writer and managing director of
Leiths School of Food and Wine. They have four children, Katherine, Elizabeth, James and Harriet.
*
Announcement of his introduction at the House of Lords
