Tony Baldry - Parliamentary Career

Parliamentary Career

Following the retirement of veteran Banbury Conservative MP, Neil Marten, Baldry successfully contested the seat at the 1983 general election and was elected to Parliament with a majority of 13,025.

From 1985 to 1990, Baldry was a Parliamentary Private Secretary, successively to Lynda Chalker and John Wakeham, who was leader of the House of Commons. In January 1990 Margaret Thatcher made Baldry a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department of Energy, where he helped John Wakeham privatise the electricity industry.

Baldry is one of the last of those made a Minister by Margaret Thatcher still to be in the House of Commons.

Following the election of John Major as Prime Minister in November 1990, Michael Heseltine asked that Baldry move to the Department for the Environment, where he stayed for four years covering every aspect of the Department's work including housing, planning, Local Government and construction.

In 1994, Baldry moved to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to cover in the House of Commons for Lynda Chalker who was the Minister for Overseas Development but in the House of Lords. As a consequence, he spoke for the Government on International Development in the House of Commons.

In 1995 he was promoted to the rank of Minister of State at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food – where he had to grapple with the twin problems of BSE and increasingly unpopular EU fisheries policies, and was a position he held until the fall of the Major government in 1997. His civil servants nicknamed him 'Baldrick'.

On 21 June 2010, Baldry was appointed Second Church Estates Commissioner, with responsibility for answering questions in the House in a manner similar to questions to ministers on the work of the Church Commissioners.,

In the 2010 general election Baldry was re-elected with an increased majority, of 18,227 votes.

Following the 2010 General Election he became co-chair of the APPG on Agriculture and Food for Development along with Lord Cameron of Dillington, and joined the Ecclesiastical Select Committee.