Norman Baker

NORMAN BAKER

Norman Baker was born on 26 July 1957 in Aberdeen, United Kingdom. He is a Liberal Democrat politician who was first elected in 1987 as a councillor on the Lewes District Council. From 1997 to 2015 he served in the House of Commons as MP for Lewes, thus becoming the first non-Conservative MP since 1874 to represent that constituency in East Sussex. In the 2001-2005 Parliament, Norman Baker was a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and was Shadow Environment Secretary from 2002 until 2006, and shadow Transport Secretary from 2006 to 2010. At the 2010 general election, the Liberal Democrats entered a coalition agreement with the Conservative Party and Mr. Baker was appointed a Transport Minister, before being promoted in October 2013 to become Minister of State for Crime Prevention at the Home Office. He has been President of the Tibet Society since 2013.

Mr. Baker has been very active in highlighting the flaws and manipulations behind the poor decision-making process related to the 2003 Iraq war. He particularly focused on the tragic case of David Kelly, the former United Nations weapons inspector. In 2007 he published the book “The Strange Death of David Kelly”, after a year-long detailed investigation that he personally carried out. Norman has always been engaged in the defence of human and civil rights, including questions linked to detention, female genital mutilations and the legalisation of cannabis. The latter brought him to hold views at odds with the positions of the Tory-led government, which finally induced him to resign from the Home Office in November 2014. He famously described his work as Number 2 within the Home Office led by Secretary Theresa May as the only Liberal Democrat in the Home Office as being “the only hippy at an Iron Maiden concert”.