Douglas Hogg, 3rd Viscount Hailsham

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Douglas Martin Hogg, 3rd Viscount Hailsham, QC, (born 2 February, 1945), is a British politician and barrister and the Conservative Member of Parliament for Sleaford and North Hykeham.

Douglas Hogg is the son of Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone, a former Lord Chancellor. He inherited the Viscountcy on 12 October, 2001 upon the death of his father who had disclaimed that title for life in 1963, but later accepted a life peerage in 1970; he is the grandson of Douglas Hogg, 1st Viscount Hailsham, also a former Lord Chancellor. He is known as simply Douglas Hogg.

He was educated at Eton College, Berkshire and Christ Church, Oxford where he was awarded a master's degree in history in 1968, he also served as the president of the Oxford Union in 1967. He was Called to the Bar in 1968, and has worked as a barrister since. He became a Queen's Counsel in 1990, a year after his sister, Dame Mary Hogg, who is now a judge in the Family Division of the High Court. He was elected as a Member of Parliament at the 1979 General Election for the Lincolnshire seat of Grantham following the retirement of the sitting Conservative MP Joseph Godber.

Hogg held the seat with a majority of 18,150 and has remained an MP since. His seat at Grantham was abolished, and since the 1997 General Election he has represented Sleaford and North Hykeham.

In parliament he served as a member of the agriculture, fisheries and food select committee from 1979 until he was appointed as the Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury Leon Brittan in 1982.

He became a member of the government of Margaret Thatcher following the 1983 General Election when he was appointed as an Opposition whip for a year. He rejoined the government in 1986 when he was appointed as a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Home Office and was promoted in 1989 as the Minister of State at the Department of Trade and Industry. He was moved in 1990 under the leadership of John Major to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, becoming a member of the Privy Council in 1992. He joined Major's Cabinet as the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in 1995, serving in that capacity during the BSE crisis for which he received much criticism (see [1]) and remaining in post until the election of the Tony Blair government in 1997. Following the 1997 General Election he was a member of the home affairs select committee for a year, and has remained on the backbenches since.