Norman Baker.

Norman Baker is a former Government minister, Member of Parliament, author, broadcaster, campaigner and singer-songwriter, widely regarded as one of the most tenacious and independent-minded parliamentarians of his generation. Born in Aberdeen in 1957 and raised in England from the age of eleven, he studied German at Royal Holloway College, University of London, before a varied early career that took in roles from regional director for Our Price Records to teaching English and environmental campaigning — a breadth of experience that shaped his reputation as anything but a conventional career politician. A lifelong enthusiast for classic cars, he passed his driving test just after his seventeenth birthday and has been driving Triumph Heralds on and off ever since.

Baker entered Parliament in 1997 as MP for Lewes, overturning a Conservative majority of more than 12,000 to become the seat’s first non-Conservative MP since 1874. Over eighteen years in the Commons he built a formidable reputation as a parliamentary interrogator, earning The Spectator’s “Inquisitor of the Year” award in 2001 and Channel 4’s “Opposition MP of the Year” in 2002. His years-long effort to force disclosure of MPs’ expenses under the Freedom of Information Act finally succeeded in 2007 and reshaped the transparency of British public life, and his dogged questioning of Peter Mandelson contributed to Mandelson’s second resignation from government. In a landmark case, he successfully went to the High Court to compel MI5 to grant him access to information he believed the security service held on him — the first time this had happened in the agency’s 92-year history. As columnist Matthew Parris warned, “You underestimate him at your peril. He has a habit of being right.”

A committed environmentalist and animal-welfare advocate, Baker served in a series of Liberal Democrat front-bench roles, including as the party’s environment and transport spokesman, and received the RSPCA’s Lord Erskine Award in 2003. Following the 2010 election he was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport, where his achievements included the £600 million Local Sustainable Transport Fund, a doubling of the cycling budget, a major rail investment programme, and the electrification of hundreds of miles of track. In 2013 he was promoted to Minister of State at the Home Office, with responsibility for crime prevention, where he campaigned for evidence-based drug-policy reform and helped force some of the first prosecutions under the Female Genital Mutilation Act. He resigned from the Home Office in November 2014, memorably likening his time there to “being the only hippy at an Iron Maiden concert,” and in the same year was appointed to the Privy Council, entitling him to the honorific “The Right Honourable” for life.

Baker has never shied away from difficult or controversial questions, and is the author of several acclaimed books. The Strange Death of David Kelly (2007) set out his contested investigation into the death of the Government weapons expert — “a stunning work of non-fiction,” in the words of The Sunday Telegraph. …And What Do You Do? What The Royal Family Don’t Want You to Know (2019) offered what The Daily Telegraph called “a clear-eyed assessment of our royal family,” while his political memoir Against the Grain (2015) was hailed by Peter Oborne as “a glorious book by a remarkable man.” Nick Clegg once described him as “a cross between Gandhi and a battering ram” — a phrase that captures both his idealism and his persistence.

As UK President of the Tibet Society for many years, Baker was an outspoken advocate for Tibetan rights, and as a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and Liberal Democrat environment spokesman he negotiated cross-party support for a Climate Change Bill drafted by Friends of the Earth. Beyond politics, he is a keen music enthusiast and the lyricist and frontman of the band The Reform Club, having released his third album, and continues to work as a columnist, broadcaster, author, consultant and lecturer. Whether as a minister, an author or a performer, Norman Baker brings the same qualities to everything he does: sharp intelligence, fearless persistence, and a refusal to accept the easy answer.