Edward Leigh

Sir Edward Julian Egerton Leigh MP (born 20 July 1950) is a British politician who has served as a Conservative Member of Parliament since 1983.

Leigh speaks regularly in the House of Commons on civil liberties, constitutional, ecclesiastical and economic matters. He has represented Gainsborough, Lincolnshire in the House of Commons as its Member of Parliament since 1983 (representing its predecessor constituency, Gainsborough and Horncastle, until 1997).

Leigh was knighted in the 2013 Birthday Honours for public and political service.

He served as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in John Major's ministry and as the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee from 2001 to 2010, investigating government waste and seeking value for money in public expenditure. Under his leadership, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) was responsible for saving the taxpayer over £4 billion. Sir Edward stepped down at the end of the parliamentary session in 2010, as it is customary for a member of the Opposition to hold this post.

Early life

Leigh was educated at The Oratory School, the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle (the French School in London) before going up to University College, Durham, where he read History (BA) and was elected President of the Durham Union Society. Before entering politics, he qualified as a barrister at the Inner Temple, and practised in arbitration and criminal law as a member of Goldsmiths Chambers. Leigh was elected to Richmond Borough Council and thereafter to the Greater London Council, serving as Councillor between 1974 and 1981. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (FCIArb) and still undertakes some legal work while serving as an MP.

His father, Sir Neville Leigh, hailed from the ancient Cheshire family of West Hall, High Legh and was a descendant of the Egertons, earls of Bridgwater. His maternal grandfather was Colonel Cyril Denzil Branch MC, a French citizen, and he is a nephew of Princess Nikolai Galitzine.

Political career

Leigh first stood for Parliament at the October 1974 general election when he contested the safe Labour seat of Middlesbrough, but he was beaten by Arthur Bottomley. In 1983 he was elected for Gainsborough and Horncastle. A strong supporter of Margaret Thatcher, Leigh with Michael Brown MP, visited 10 Downing Street on the morning of Thatcher's resignation as Prime Minister in 1990 to try to persuade her to carry on.

Although Charles Powell advised them it was a forlorn task, they were nonetheless granted access to the Cabinet which was in process at the time. Leigh and Brown departed 10 Downing Street and walked down Whitehall back to the House of Commons reputedly with "tears in their eyes". After Thatcher resigned, in the ensuing leadership election, Leigh supported Michael Heseltine, under whom he had served at the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), preferring to support someone who had stabbed Thatcher in the front to those who had stabbed her in the back.

Leigh served as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in John Major's ministry but was sacked in May 1993 over the stance he took by opposing the Maastricht Treaty. Whilst in office at the DTI he was a keen advocate of privatisation of the Post Office (opposed by Labour at the time but as the Royal Mail division attracting general bipartisan support and floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2013). In the following Conservative leadership election, Leigh supported John Redwood.

From 2001 until 2010, Edward Leigh served as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, the primary parliamentary body auditing the Budget, investigating government waste, and seeking value for money in public expenditure. During his two terms as Chairman, the PAC took evidence on 420 separate government projects and programmes and was responsible for saving the taxpayer over £4 billion.

In October 2006, Leigh was vocal in stating that after David Cameron had become Leader of his Party core supporters were drifting away from voting Conservative. Nonetheless, despite being on the losing side in successive party leadership elections, his effective chairmanship of the Public Accounts Committee led to the rejuvenation of his parliamentary career.

Early in 2008, as Chairman of the PAC, he was embarrassed by relying on flawed Department for Transport (DfT) statistics to attack motorcyclists for tax evasion. He accused 38% of motorcyclists of evading vehicle excise duty. He later apologised for this following the admission by the DfT that 95.5% of motorcycles are entirely legal.

Leigh serves as President of the socially-conservative Cornerstone Group, which represents the views of over 40 Conservative Members of Parliament. He was author of the group's inaugural pamphlet Faith, Flag and Family in 2005.

From 2010 to 2011, Leigh served as an Independent Financial Advisor to HM Treasury, appointed by George Osborne to bring external challenge to the development and implementation of a new financial management strategy for central government. He stood down in 2011, but was then appointed to report directly to the Chancellor of the Exchequer on improving Parliament's financial scrutiny of the Budget. He is a member of the Treasury Financial Reporting & Advisory Board. Since 2010, Leigh has been a delegate to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, speaking regularly and serving on the Culture, Science, Education and Media Committee. In 2015, Sir Edward received the Légion d'honneur for his role as “a bridge between our parliaments, our governments and our societies”, as stated by H.E. Sylvie Bermann at his investiture.

At the end of 2010 Leigh was offered but declined the British ambassadorship to the Holy See. Leigh also supported Boris Johnson's call to George Osborne in 2011 for lowering the rate of taxation in the UK in order to assist its economic recovery following the credit crunch. Leigh, a qualified barrister and an Assembly Member of the Council of Europe, opposes further human rights legislation, as proposed by the European Court of Human Rights.

In 2011, Leigh was appointed Chairman of the Public Accounts Commission, the body which audits the National Audit Office.

In 2012, Leigh, together with a record number of fellow Conservative MPs, including numerous Privy Counsellors, successfully voted against the Coalition Government's attempted railroading of House of Lords Reform by limiting time for meaningful parliamentary debate on this major constitutional issue.

On 15 July 2014, he appeared in the House of Commons to be advocating a means-tested National Health Service with the following comment, as recorded by Hansard:

"When will both political parties be honest about the massive looming black hole in health funding, with an ageing population demanding ever better care? We cannot afford to pay for it out of general taxation, so are we going to be honest and have an open debate about moving to the French system of social insurance in which people are charged and repaid if they do not have the means, giving them an infinitely better health service?"

In September 2014, Leigh criticised the Government’s decision to allow mitochondrial replacement therapy to prevent the birth of the children with incurable diseases such as muscular dystrophy. These diseases affect up to 1 in 6,500 babies which Leigh stated could lead to people being “harvested for their parts" and a divide between what he referred to as "the modified and the unmodified". The Department for Health asserted no genetic modification is involved.

Sir Edward also gained plaudits for his defence of fellow Conservative MP, Nigel Mills, by stating matter-of-factly that some committees can be boring!

In March 2016 he joined three other Conservative backbench MPs in "talking out" a Bill introduced by Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, which aimed to reverse moves to privatise the NHS. By filibustering for three and a half hours, Dr Lucas was left with just 17 minutes to present her Bill, which was subsequently shelved without a vote.

Beliefs

Leigh has argued for tightening of abortion law and a ban on human embryonic research. These positions align with his religion's stance, with accord to papal pronouncements. He was on the losing side in defence of Section 28, which barred Local Authorities from promoting "the teaching in any maintained-school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship" and was a vocal opponent of the Civil Partnership Act 2004, voting against it in Parliament at its Second Reading. Leigh later proposed an amendment to extend the property and pension rights afforded by civil partnerships to siblings who had lived together for more than 12 years. This was opposed by many backers of the initial Bill, such as fellow Conservative MP Sir Alan Duncan, who dubbed it a wrecking amendment.

Leigh supported Brexit in the 2016 European Union Referendum

Opposition to Conservative leadership

On a number of occasions Leigh has voted against the leadership of his party where it conflicts with his own principles. In 2003, Leigh famously rebelled against the leadership of his own party and the Labour government to oppose military intervention in Iraq in 2003. He was one of only 15 conservative rebels who opposed it at the time.

Speakership positions

A veteran backbencher, Leigh was encouraged to challenge for the Speakership of the House of Commons, and after the 2010 general election for one of the Deputy Speakerships, but chose not to pursue this opportunity since parliamentary convention precludes Government Party members being elected to such offices unless already in situ.

All-party parliamentary group

A fluent French speaker, Leigh is currently serving as the Chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on France and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Italy, delivering a speech in Italian at the Palace of Westminster to visiting Deputies of the Italian Parliament. He is also the Chairman of the new All-Party Parliamentary Group on Russia, Secretary of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Insurance, and Chairman of the Foreign Affairs, Defence, and International Development subcommittee of the 1922 Committee.

Criticism

Leigh has been described as an "intelligent but prankish and unpredictable radical rightwing intellectual".

Honours

Leigh was knighted in the 2013 Birthday Honours for public and political service. He was previously nicknamed "the Viscount" in parliamentary circles, alluding to his landed gentry background.

• Knight Bachelor (2013)
• Officier of the Légion d'honneur (2015)
• Knight of Honour and Devotion of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (1994).

Personal life

Leigh married Mary Goodman in London on 25 September 1984; a grandniece of George, Duke of Mecklenburg and a great-granddaughter of Lady Ottoline Morrell; she is descended from Princess Augusta of Great Britain, a sister of King George III. By marrying a Roman Catholic, Lady Leigh had previously forfeited her precedence in the line of succession to the British throne until the change in the law of 2013.

Sir Edward and Lady Leigh have six children: Natalia, Tamara, Benedict, Marina, Nicholas and Theodore. The eldest children have worked overseas for aid agencies in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The family's primary residence is in Westminster in London.

He is third cousin of comedian Al Murray