John Horam
John Rhodes Horam, Baron Horam (born 7 March 1939) is a Conservative politician in the United Kingdom. He sat in the House of Commons for two separate periods between 1970 and 2010, as a member of three different political parties, latterly as the Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Orpington until 2010. In 2012 he was appointed an Electoral Commissioner. On 4 September 2013, he was created a working life peer as Baron Horam of Grimsargh in the County of Lancashire. Early life. Horam was born in Preston, Lancashire. He went to the independent Silcoates School in Wakefield , West Yorkshire. He was educated at St Catharine's College, Cambridge where he studied Economics, gaining an MA in 1960. From 1960 to 1962, he was a market research officer for Rowntree's in York. He was a features writer for the "Financial Times" and "The Economist", and a founder of CRU Group, a commodities analysis and consulting company. He was also the first Chairman of the Circle Thirty Three Housing Association, now part of the Circle Group. Parliamentary career. Labour. Horam contested Folkestone and Hythe in 1966, but was beaten by the Conservative incumbent, Albert Costain. He was first  elected as an MP for Gateshead West at the 1970 general election as a member of the Labour Party, and served as a Parliamentary secretary in the Department of Transport under Bill Rodgers in the Callaghan government. SDP. Horam was one of the first to leave the Labour Party for the SDP in 1981, having been increasingly uneasy with the leftward direction that Labour had been veering in. Horam left Parliament after the 1983 general election, when his seat was abolished and after failing to be elected as a Social Democrat in the Newcastle Central constituency. Conservative. Horam joined the  Conservative Party shortly before the 1987 election and was elected to Parliament from Orpington, as a Conservative in 1992 with a majority of 12,935 votes. In 1994, Horam was appointed to be a junior minister under John Major in the Office of Public Service and Science within the Cabinet Office. Soon afterwards, Horam made a lateral move to the Department of Health where he served as a junior minister for the duration of the Major Government. Horam gained some notoriety during the 1997 general election when he was the first member of the Major Government to come out publicly against  joining a single currency. In opposition, Horam served as the first Chairman of the House Environmental Audit Select Committee from 1997 to 2004. In the 2005 general election, he increased his majority to 4,947, a significant increase over his narrow victory of only 269 votes in 2001 over Liberal Democrat Chris Maines. In 2003 he was one of the handful of Conservative MPs who voted against Britain's participation in the Iraq war. He was a member of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs from 2005 to 2010. He was also a member of the Executive of the Conservative Backbench  1922 Committee from 2005 to 2008 and drafted the original “Equal Votes “ legislation, which is scheduled to come into effect for the 2020 general election. Horam was the only MP to have sat in the House of Commons as a member of three different parties since the Second World War. In addition, he was the last of the 29 MPs who joined the SDP in 1981 and 1982 to remain a Member of Parliament. Despite his constituency being only a short train journey from the House of Commons, Horam still claimed expenses for a second home. On 12 October 2009 , Horam announced his intention to stand down at the next general election. On 4 September 2013, he was created a working life peer as Baron Horam of Grimsargh in the County of Lancashire. In the Lords he has advocated a Living Wage, raising the income tax threshold, better vocational training and more apprenticeships, more help for the Troubled Families Programme, and a big housing drive. In 2015 he was appointed to the External Affairs Subcommittee of the Lords European Union Committee. He has urged that the EU act as an honest broker between Russia and the USA. A member of  the Conservative European Mainstream Group, he is strongly pro-EU believing that the UK maximises its influence and prosperity inside the EU. As Lord Horam, he gave his response to the Queens Speech in the House of Lords on 9 January 2020. He called strongly for the government to deliver on its promises made in the election to “the towns and cities of the north of England and the midland.” He welcomed the £3.6 billion being put behind the so-called ‘towns fund’, though wants more to be done for smaller communities as well. He also calls for greater  investments in technical education, criticising the apprenticeship levy, as well as for greater connection between London and the North and Midland regions. Also in response to the Queen's Speech, he was critical of the rollout of universal credit, which he says needed “urgent attention” and acknowledges that, whilst there is agreement on something needed to be done about social care, what was really required was a ‘big cheque’. To pay for these investments, he said that the government could not deal with the need for investment in the economy by, “a more relaxed approach to debt” alone, and called  for an increase in taxation, specifically in relation to incomes tax from earned income, capital gains and dividends. He thinks the UK is a “lightly taxed country”, compared to other countries in Europe. He also proposed that the Conservative party should get rid of its campaign manifesto of ‘Get Brexit Done’ in favour of either “Level up” or “Splash the Cash”. In a speech in the Lords on 3 December 2020 on the Government's Spending review, Horam said that he is a supporter of ‘Modern Monetary Theory’ believing that ‘the economic policy should balance the economy, rather than the  budget’. Stating that, ‘rather than worrying too much about deficits, the advantage of MMT is that it enables Governments to concentrate on what should be done to improve the economy and society, and not be perpetually bogged down in arguments about how to pay for it.’ He positioned himself, on the issue of raising taxes, ‘that they should only be raised to damp down demand should inflation rise.’ In a speech in the Lords on 10 December 2020 on the Statutory Instruments introducing new immigration rules, Horam said that ‘this statutory instrument has been brought about by the UK’s  exiting of the EU and therefore leaving the free movement of people system which prevails in the EU.’ He stated that ‘the Blair Labour Government had bought in heavily to free movement and mass immigration and the results were devastating for some working class communities.’ He specifically cited the experience of Paul Embery, the Labour and trade union activist, whose book, “Despised”, sets out the effect on Dagenham, where he was born. Horam said he hopes that ‘present politicians of all parties understand the lessons of the last 20 years and listen more to the views of the British people ’. In support of the 2021 budget told the House of Lords that he, "[takes] the view that the first rule of economics is, in all circumstances, to maximise real economic growth. The second rule is to make the distribution of the rewards of growth as fair as practically possible. I support the Budget because it has made some real progress in both these areas. My only doubt about the Budget is over the proposed rise in Corporation Tax, which is also a reservation on the part of the Office of Budget Responsibility.” In 2021 Lord Horam helped in setting up , with Sir John Hayes, MP for South Holland and the Deepings, The Common Sense Group of Conservative Parliamentarians. This is now a substantial group in Parliament with a strong core of new “Red Wall” Conservative MPs. It campaigns for a robust approach to immigration, law and order and “wokery” and supports the Levelling Up agenda. In a letter to The Times on 2 July 2021 Lord Horam suggested that one way of improving Union relations within the UK would be to have "regular meetings between the prime minister and the first ministers, revolving between Cardiff, Belfast, Edinburgh and London." In  a speech on 14 October 2021 in a House of Lords debate on Inequalities of Region and Place Lord Horam praised the Government’s efforts at helping the north. He said : “We have a levelling-up fund, a community renewal fund, a shared prosperity fund, and free port and towns funds. We have the beginnings of effective localism in the shape of city mayors...I also think that levelling up will help the south. As the Prime Minister said when he was Mayor of London: ‘Do we want the south-east of Britain, already the most densely populated major country  in Europe, to resemble a giant suburbia?’” In a speech on the second budget in 2021 in the House of Lords on 3 Nov 2021 he said: “The fact is that Britain has, for too long, been trying to get European levels of public service and welfare at US levels of taxation. The crunch has now come. The Government have given clear indication that they prioritise maintaining, and if possible improving, public services and are therefore prepared to put up taxation to the same extent. That is fundamentally right...There is therefore no evidence that a higher tax rate, within  the sort of limits that we are talking about, necessarily adversely affects the rate of growth…A factor that is important is the way in which you use the money that you have raised." Lord Horam went on to criticise the decision to scrap the £20 uplift in Universal Credit, but said that apart from that blemish the Government’s economic strategy was right. Personal life. He married Judith Jackson in 1987. She has two sons from a previous marriage. In 2010 he was elected a Fellow Commoner of St Catharine's College.