Alan Haselhurst
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The Right Honourable Sir Alan Gordon Barraclough Haselhurst (born June 23, 1937) British politician. He is the Conservative Party Member of Parliament for Saffron Walden. He is the Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons.
Alan Haselhurst was born in South Elmsall, West Yorkshire and was educated at the King Edward VI School, Birmingham, Cheltenham College, Gloucestershire, and Oriel College, Oxford. Whilst in Oxford he was the president of the Oxford University Conseravtive Association in 1958, and served as both the secretary and treasurer for two years with the Oxford Union from 1959. Before his election to parliament he worked in management in the chemicals industry and was a director in his family pharmacy firm. He was the chairman of Manchester youth and community service from 1974 until he was re-elected to parliament.
He worked as an election agent for the Conservative MP for Hertford Robert Balniel at both the 1964 and 1966 general elections. In 1964 he became the chairman of the National Young Conservatives for two years. He was elected to the House of Commons at the 1970 General Election for the Lancashire seat of Heywood and Prestwich, defeating the Labour MP Denis Coe by 1,042 votes. Haselhurst lost the seat at the February 1974 General Election to Labour's Jim Callaghan by just 517 votes. He contested the seat again at the October 1974 General Election and lost to Callaghan by 3,714 votes. The Conservative MP for the Essex seat of Saffron Walden, Peter Kirk, died on April 17, 1977 and he was selected to contest the July 7 by-election. Haselhurst held the seat with a majority of 12,437 and has remained the MP there since.
In parliament he served as the Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the Home Secretary Robert Carr from 1973 until his defeat at the February 1974 General Election. He also served as the PPS to the Secretary of State for Education and Science Mark Carlisle for two years from 1979. He served on the European legislation select committee for fifteen years from 1982 and was a member of the transport select committee 1992-7. Following the 1997 General Election the Speaker of the House of Commons Betty Boothroyd appointed him as the chairman of Ways and Means (more commonly the Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons), and he has remained as deputy to her successor since 2000, Michael Martin.
He has been married to Angela Margaret Bailey since 1977 and they have two sons and a daughter. He is a very vocal supporter of community based projects and was for a time a director of Turning Point a charity working with socially excluded young people for five years from 1981. He is seen as a wet, and is a supporter of Kenneth Clarke. He was knighted in 1995 and became a member of the Privy Council in 1999. He is the secretary of the all party group on cricket and has been an executive member of the Essex County Cricket Club since 1996.
Publications
- Occasionally Cricket: The Unpredictable Performances of the Outcasts CC by Alan Haselhurst, 1999, Queen Anne Press ISBN 1852916222
- Eventually Cricket by Alan Haselhurst, 2001, Queen Anne Press ISBN 1852916370
- Incidentally Cricket by Alan Haselhurst, 2003, Queen Anne Press ISBN 1852916559