1.
Privy Council of the United Kingdom
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Her Majestys Most Honourable Privy Council, usually known simply as the Privy Council, is a formal body of advisers to the Sovereign of the United Kingdom. Its membership mainly comprises senior politicians, who are present or former members of either the House of Commons or the House of Lords, the Council also holds the delegated authority to issue Orders of Council, mostly used to regulate certain public institutions. The Council advises the sovereign on the issuing of Royal Charters, which are used to grant special status to incorporated bodies, otherwise, the Privy Councils powers have now been largely replaced by the Cabinet of the United Kingdom. The Judicial Committee consists of judges appointed as Privy Counsellors, predominantly Justices of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. The Privy Council of the United Kingdom was preceded by the Privy Council of Scotland, the key events in the formation of the modern Privy Council are given below, Witenagemot was an early equivalent to the Privy Council of England. During the reigns of the Norman monarchs, the English Crown was advised by a court or curia regis. The body originally concerned itself with advising the sovereign on legislation, administration, later, different bodies assuming distinct functions evolved from the court. The courts of law took over the business of dispensing justice, nevertheless, the Council retained the power to hear legal disputes, either in the first instance or on appeal. Furthermore, laws made by the sovereign on the advice of the Council, powerful sovereigns often used the body to circumvent the Courts and Parliament. During Henry VIIIs reign, the sovereign, on the advice of the Council, was allowed to enact laws by mere proclamation, the legislative pre-eminence of Parliament was not restored until after Henry VIIIs death. Though the royal Council retained legislative and judicial responsibilities, it became an administrative body. The Council consisted of forty members in 1553, but the sovereign relied on a smaller committee, by the end of the English Civil War, the monarchy, House of Lords, and Privy Council had been abolished. The remaining parliamentary chamber, the House of Commons, instituted a Council of State to execute laws, the forty-one members of the Council were elected by the House of Commons, the body was headed by Oliver Cromwell, de facto military dictator of the nation. In 1653, however, Cromwell became Lord Protector, and the Council was reduced to thirteen and twenty-one members, all elected by the Commons. In 1657, the Commons granted Cromwell even greater powers, some of which were reminiscent of those enjoyed by monarchs, the Council became known as the Protectors Privy Council, its members were appointed by the Lord Protector, subject to Parliaments approval. In 1659, shortly before the restoration of the monarchy, the Protectors Council was abolished, Charles II restored the Royal Privy Council, but he, like previous Stuart monarchs, chose to rely on a small group of advisers. Under George I even more power transferred to this committee and it now began to meet in the absence of the sovereign, communicating its decisions to him after the fact. Thus, the British Privy Council, as a whole, ceased to be a body of important confidential advisers to the sovereign and it is closely related to the word private, and derives from the French word privé
2.
William Hague
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William Jefferson Hague, Baron Hague of Richmond PC FRSL is a British Conservative politician and life peer. He represented Richmond, Yorkshire as Member of Parliament from 1989 to 2015, Hague was educated at Wath-upon-Dearne Grammar School, the University of Oxford and INSEAD, subsequently being returned to the House of Commons at a by-election in 1989. Hague quickly rose through the ranks of the government of John Major and was appointed to Cabinet in 1995 as Secretary of State for Wales. Following the Conservatives landslide defeat at the 1997 general election by the Labour Party and he returned to the backbenches, pursuing a career as an author, writing biographies of William Pitt the Younger and William Wilberforce. He also held several directorships, and worked as a consultant, after David Cameron was elected Leader of the Conservative Party in 2005, Hague was reappointed to the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Foreign Secretary. He also assumed the role of Senior Member of the Shadow Cabinet, after the formation of the Coalition Government in 2010, Hague was appointed First Secretary of State and Foreign Secretary. Cameron described him as his de facto political deputy, Hague was elevated as a Life Peer in the 2015 Dissolution Honours List and created Baron Hague of Richmond, of Richmond in the County of North Yorkshire, on 9 October. Hague was born on 26 March 1961 in Rotherham, Yorkshire and he initially boarded at Ripon Grammar School and then attended Wath-upon-Dearne Comprehensive, a State-secondary school near Rotherham, previously Wath Grammar School. His parents, Nigel and Stella Hague, ran a soft drinks manufacturing business where he worked during school holidays and his childhood nurse, Bessie Camm, went on to be the oldest living person in Britain as of 2017, at age 112. He first made the news at the age of 16 by addressing the Conservatives at their 1977 Annual National Conference. In his speech he told the delegates, half of you wont be here in 30 or 40 years time, but that others would have to live with consequences of a Labour Government if it stayed in power. Hague read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Magdalen College, Oxford and he was President of the Oxford University Conservative Association, but was convicted of electoral malpractice in the election process. Hague was playing the game of using his powers as President to keep his faction in power. There were accusations of blatant ballot box stuffing and he also served as President of the Oxford Union, an established route into politics. After Oxford, Hague went on to study for a Master of Business Administration degree at INSEAD and he then worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, where Archie Norman was his mentor. After Lamont was sacked in 1993, Hague moved to the Department of Social Security where he was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, the following year he was promoted as Minister of State in the DSS with responsibility for Social Security and Disabled People. His fast rise up through Government was attributed to his intelligence and he continued serving in Cabinet until the Conservatives were replaced by New Labour at the 1997 general election. At the age of 36, Hague was tasked with rebuilding the Conservative Party by attempting to build a modern image
3.
Michael Howard
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Michael Howard, Baron Howard of Lympne, CH, PC, QC is a British politician who served as the Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition from November 2003 to December 2005. He studied at Peterhouse, Cambridge, following which he joined the Young Conservatives, in 1964 he was called to the Bar and became a Queens Counsel in 1982. He became a Member of Parliament in the 1983 General Election, representing the constituency of Folkestone and this quickly led to promotion and Howard became Minister for Local Government in 1987. Under John Major, he held cabinet positions including Secretary of State for Employment. In November 2003, following the Conservative Partys vote of no confidence in its leader Iain Duncan Smith, he was elected unopposed. In the 2005 General Election, the Conservatives gained 33 new seats in Westminster, including five from the Liberal Democrats, following the election, Howard resigned as Leader of the Conservative Party and was succeeded by David Cameron. Howard did not contest his seat of Folkestone and Hythe in the 2010 General Election, Howard was born Michael Hecht in Gorseinon, Swansea. He is the son of Bernat Hecht, who was born in Romania and his mother, Hilda, lived in Wales from the age of 6 months. Both of Howards parents were from Jewish families, when Howard was six, his parents became naturalised as British subjects, and his surname was also changed following the parents naturalisation with the new surname Howard. Howard passed his eleven-plus exam in 1952 and then attended Llanelli Boys Grammar School and he joined the Young Conservatives at age 15. He obtained eight O-levels and his subsequent A-levels earned him a place at Peterhouse at Cambridge University and he was President of the Cambridge Union Society in 1962. After taking a 2,1 in the first part of the tripos, he switched to law. Howard was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1964 and specialised in employment, unlike his many Cambridge contemporaries, he continued his career at the Bar, becoming a practising Queens Counsel in 1982. The late 1960s saw Howards promotion within the Bow Group, where he became Chairman in April 1970, in the 1970s, Howard was a leading advocate of British membership of the Common Market and served on the board of the cross-party Britain in Europe group. Howard was named as co-respondent in the divorce case of 1960s model Sandra Paul. They have a son born in 1976 and a born in 1977. C. Which he has held since childhood, in June 1982, Howard was selected to contest the constituency of Folkestone and Hythe in Kent after the sitting Conservative MP, Sir Albert Costain, decided to retire. Howard won the seat at the 1983 general election and this junior post became very important, as he oversaw the Big Bang introduction of new technology in 1986
4.
Norman Fowler, Baron Fowler
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Peter Norman Fowler, Baron Fowler, PC is a British politician who was a member of Margaret Thatchers ministry. He is currently the Lord Speaker, having assumed office at the beginning of September 2016, after serving as Shadow Minister of Transport, he was appointed Minister of Transport in 1979, being responsible for making seat belts compulsory. Later, as Secretary of State for Health and Social Services and he resigned from the cabinet as Employment Secretary, and was knighted in 1990. He was Chairman of the Conservative Party from 1992 to 1994, Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Transport, in 2001, he was made a Conservative life peer as Baron Fowler. He then became a journalist, and worked on The Times, Fowler was elected for Nottingham South in 1970, after the seat was abolished, he switched to Sutton Coldfield at the February 1974 election. During the mid-1970s Fowler was shadow Minister of Transport, upon Margaret Thatcher becoming Prime Minister in 1979, she did not immediately appoint Fowler to her Cabinet, explaining, we were short of one place. As a result, Norman Fowler, as Minister of State at Transport, was not able to be an member of the Cabinet. As Secretary of State for Transport, Fowler drove through Lord Nugents 1981 bill to make seat belts compulsory, as Secretary of State for Health and Social Security in 1986, Fowler implemented the first official drive to educate the British public to the dangers of AIDS. Edwina Currie and John Major both served him as junior ministers. Fowler later resigned from the cabinet as Employment Secretary in January 1990, the expression later became a smokescreen for politicians who had quit high-profile roles for slightly more dark or controversial reasons. Following his resignation from the frontbench, Fowler was knighted in 1990, in 2001, he stepped down as a Member of Parliament. After standing down from the House of Commons, he was made a Conservative Lord Temporal as Baron Fowler, in 2003, he proposed that the European Union should appoint a high-level coordinator with ambassadorial rank to deal with the AIDS epidemic. In 2006, he chaired a House of Lords select committee which criticised the use of the licence fee. His book, A Political Suicide, was published in 2008, in 2016, he was elected as Lord Speaker. He is the first male holder of such a title, though similar responsibilities were held by men prior to the passage of the Constitutional Reform Act and he has stated that he favours reducing the House of Lords to 600 members. He has been involved in industry, having been on the board of directors of several companies. He is non-executive chairman of Aggregate Industries plc and he is a member of the National Union of Journalists. Fowler demanded an independent inquiry into the phone hacking inquiry on 7 July 2011 and he said that the UK was faced by one of the biggest scandals affecting the press in living memory
5.
John Major
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Sir John Major, KG, CH, PC is a British politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1997. A cabinet minister from 1987, he served Margaret Thatcher in the Treasury, Major was Member of Parliament for Huntingdon from 1979 to 2001. He is currently the oldest living former Prime Minister, following the death of Thatcher on 8 April 2013, at the beginning of his premiership, Major presided over British participation in the Gulf War in March 1991 and negotiated the Maastricht Treaty in December 1991. Shortly after this, even though a supporter of the ERM. This event led to a loss of confidence in Conservative economic policies, Major went on to lose the 1997 general election months later, in one of the largest electoral defeats since the Great Reform Act of 1832. After defeat, Major resigned as Prime Minister and was succeeded as Leader of the Conservative Party by William Hague and he went on to retire from active politics, leaving the House of Commons at the 2001 general election. Major was born in 1943 at St Helier Hospital in Sutton, Surrey and he was christened John Roy Major but only John was recorded on his birth certificate. He used his name until the early 1980s. He attended primary school at Cheam Common and from 1954 he attended Rutlish School, in 1955, with his fathers garden ornaments business in decline, the family moved to Brixton. He also credited a chance meeting with former Prime Minister Clement Attlee on the Kings Road shortly afterwards, Major left school at the age of 16 in 1959 with three O-levels in History, English Language and English Literature. He later gained three more O-levels by correspondence course, in the British Constitution, Mathematics and Economics, Majors first job was as a clerk in the insurance brokerage firm Pratt & Sons in 1959. Major joined the Young Conservatives in Brixton at this time, Major was almost 19 years old when his father died at the age of 82 on 27 March 1962. His mother died eight and a years later in September 1970 at the age of 65. After Major became Prime Minister it was misreported that his failure to get a job as a bus conductor resulted from his failing to pass a maths test and he had in fact passed all of the necessary tests but had been passed over owing to his height. After a period of unemployment, Major started working at the London Electricity Board in 1963 which is incidentally his successor as Prime Minister, Tony Blair. He later decided to undertake a course in banking. Major took up a post as an executive at the Standard Chartered Bank in May 1965 and he was sent to work in Jos, Nigeria, by the bank in 1967 and he nearly died in a car accident there. Major was interested in politics from an early age, encouraged by fellow Conservative Derek Stone, he started giving speeches on a soap-box in Brixton Market
6.
Jeremy Hanley
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Sir Jeremy James Hanley, KCMG, is a politician and chartered accountant from the United Kingdom. He served as the Chairman of the Conservative Party from 1994 to 1995, Hanley was educated at Rugby School, and began his career with Peat Marwick Mitchell & Company as an articled clerk in 1963. He qualified as an accountant in 1969, and as a certified accountant. He joined the Financial Training Company, responsible for training chartered accountants, as a lecturer in Law and Accountancy, on his first day in the House of Commons he ended up sitting next to Ian Paisley and introduced himself saying, How do you do. I did not realise that you were on our side, to which Paisley replied, Hanley was the Parliamentary Private Secretary to Richard Luce from 1987 to 1990, and briefly the PPS to Chris Patten. He became an Under-Secretary of State at the Northern Ireland Office in 1990, in 1994, Hanley was brought into the Cabinet by Prime Minister John Major, who made him the Chairman of the Conservative Party and a minister without portfolio. He served in this position until the 1995 Cabinet reshuffle, when he was moved to the role of Minister at the Foreign Office. Hanley has been a member of the Privy Council since 1994, in 1995, while party chairman, Hanley was confronted by several members of the fictional Jeremy Hanley fanclub in the first episode of satirical TV series The Saturday Night Armistice. Hanleys Richmond and Barnes constituency was abolished as part of a redrawing of constituency boundaries ahead of the 1997 election and he stood as the Conservative candidate for the new constituency of Richmond Park, but was defeated by the Liberal Democrat candidate Jenny Tonge. Hanley was awarded a knighthood in John Majors farewell honours list in 1997 and he is also a Freeman of the City of London, and Master of the Worshipful Company of Chartered Accountants. Since leaving politics, Hanley has served on a number of company boards, Hanley is the son of the actor Jimmy Hanley and the actress Dinah Sheridan. His sister, Jenny Hanley, became an actress and TV presenter in the 1970s, in 1973 he married Verna, Viscountess Villiers, and had one son, one son by a previous marriage and one step daughter. Times Guide to the House of Commons 1997
7.
Cecil Parkinson
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Cecil Edward Parkinson, Baron Parkinson, PC was a British Conservative politician and cabinet minister. A chartered accountant by training, he entered Parliament in 1970 and was appointed a minister in Margaret Thatchers first government in 1979, Parkinson subsequently served as Secretary of State for Energy, and later Transport. He resigned that office in 1990, on the day that Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister. He was created Baron Parkinson in 1992 and served in the House of Lords until his retirement in September 2015, Parkinson was born in Carnforth, Lancashire, in 1931. He was the son of a railway worker and he won a Blue as an athlete, competing over 220 and 440 yards. While at university, he was a Labour supporter and for a time was a member of the Labour Party and he did National Service as an NCO in the Royal Air Force. He married Ann Mary Jarvis in 1957 and they had three daughters, Mary, Emma and Joanna. After leaving university, Parkinson worked as a manager for the Metal Box Company and he trained and qualified as a Chartered Accountant and in 1961 founded Parkinson-Hart Securities. Parkinson was a supporter of Preston North End, and in November 1988 paid a tribute to Tom Finney on This Is Your Life, in the June 1970 general election Parkinson stood as candidate for Northampton but was not elected. Parkinson was elected as MP for Enfield West at a by-election in November 1970, when that constituency was abolished for the February 1974 general election he was elected for the new South Hertfordshire constituency. After the 1979 General Election, he was made a trade minister. Despite his relatively junior status, he was a member of the small War Cabinet which Mrs Thatcher set up to run the Falklands War and he worked on the Conservative Partys 1983 election campaign, standing in the new Hertsmere constituency after Hertfordshire Souths abolition. Although Thatcher initially remonstrated with him that Anthony Edens womanising had been no bar on his holding the Foreign Office, she appointed him Secretary of State for Trade. Parkinson was forced to resign on 14 October 1983 after the news of Sara Keays pregnancy had become public knowledge, Flora Keays. Subsequently, as a result of a dispute over child maintenance payments, Parkinson was able to gain an injunction in 1993, following the birth, Parkinson released a statement in which he wished the baby peace, privacy and a happy life. This court order was the subject of controversy until Flora Keays reached her majority at the end of 2001. Upon Flora turning 18, it was noted in the press that Parkinson had never met his child, at the time of the revelation of Parkinsons relationship with Sara Keays in 1983, Parkinson made much of what he described as the volume of letters in support that he received. By 2001, however, the media focused more upon Flora and her difficulties than in protecting Parkinsons reputation, after four years on the back benches, he was appointed Secretary of State for Energy in 1987, and for Transport in the July 1989 reshuffle
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