John Rhodes Horam (born 7 March 1939) is a politician in the United Kingdom, and currently sits as the Conservative Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Orpington.
Early lifeHoram was born in Preston. 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 1960-2, he was a market research officer for Rowntree's of 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. Parliamentary careerLabourHe was first elected as an MP 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. SDPHoram 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 lost his seat in the 1983 general election. ConservativeHoram 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 1997-2004. 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. Horam is 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 is the only one of the 29 MPs who joined the SDP in 1981 and 1982 who is still a Member of Parliament. Despite his constituency being only a short train journey from the House of Commons, Horam still claims expenses for a second home.[1] On 12 October 2009, Horam announced his intention to stand down at the next general election.[2] Personal lifeHe married Judith Jackson in 1987. He has two sons from a previous marriage. ReferencesExternal links
Categories: 1939 births | Living people | Labour MPs (UK) | Conservative MPs (UK) | Social Democratic Party politicians (UK) | SDP MPs in the 1979-1983 Parliament (UK) | Members of the United Kingdom Parliament for English constituencies | UK MPs 1970-1974 | UK MPs 1974 | UK MPs 1974-1979 | UK MPs 1979-1983 | UK MPs 1992-1997 | UK MPs 1997-2001 | UK MPs 2001-2005 | UK MPs 2005- | Alumni of St Catharine's College, Cambridge | People from Orpington | People from Wakefield | People from Preston Questions for article: |
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