James Arbuthnot

Created Baron Arbuthnot of Edrom, of Edrom in the County of Berwick, on 1 October 2015, Lord Arbuthnot sits on the Conservative benches in the House of Lords.

In June 2011 Arbuthnot announced that he would not contest the next general election. On 16 January 2015, he publicly declared his atheism, stating "the pressure on a Conservative politician, particularly of keeping quiet about not being religious, is very similar to the pressure that there has been about keeping quiet about being gay"; he later clarified that he is not gay.

Arbuthnot was the parliamentary chairman of the Conservative Friends of Israel. He was also a member of the Top Level Group of UK Parliamentarians for Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament and Non-proliferation, established in October 2009.

In the 2009 expenses scandal, Arbuthnot apologised and repaid the public money he had claimed for his swimming pool to be cleaned. Later that year, he was further criticised in the press for £15,000 of expenses he claimed for upkeep at his second home, including tree surgery and painting his summer house.

Arbuthnot served as chairman of the Defence Select Committee from 2005 to 2014, before being nominated as a life peer in the Dissolution Peerages List 2015 of August 2015.

Arbuthnot returned to the Shadow Cabinet under Michael Howard as Shadow Trade Secretary in 2003, but stood down after the 2005 general election. Since that election he served as the chairman of the influential Defence Select Committee and was Chair of the Special Select Committee set up to scrutinise the Bill that became the Armed Forces Act 2011. He is a Senior Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute.

Arbuthnot's seat of Wanstead and Woodford was abolished at the 1997 general election, when he was selected for the new seat of North East Hampshire. In Opposition, he was a member of William Hague's Shadow Cabinet as the Conservative Party's Chief Whip until the 2001 general election when he returned to the backbenches. He was sworn of the Privy Council in 1998.

Arbuthnot stated that one of his most pleasing parliamentary achievements was "organising an all-party meeting with the Prime Minister for the exoneration of the pilots of the Chinook that crashed on the Mull of Kintyre in 1994".

In 1988 he became the Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Archie Hamilton at the Ministry of Defence, and in 1990 became the PPS to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Peter Lilley. He entered the John Major government after the 1992 general election when he was made an Assistant Government Whip. He was promoted in 1994 as the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Social Security. The following year he was promoted to Minister for Defence Procurement, where he remained until the end of the Major government in 1997.

In the 1987 general election Arbuthnot was chosen to contest the safe Conservative seat of Wanstead and Woodford, as the sitting MP, Patrick Jenkin, was standing down. Arbuthnot won the seat and increased the Conservative majority by over 2,000 to 16,412.

On 6 September 1984, Arbuthnot married Emma Louise Broadbent, daughter of Michael Broadbent, Wine Director of Christie's; she is the Chief Magistrate and Senior District Judge for England and Wales, with rulings including those related to Julian Assange, the fugitive Indian tycoon Vijay Mallya, and Zamira Hajiyeva, the first person subject to an unexplained wealth order.

Arbuthnot contested the Cynon Valley seat, in the Labour heartland of industrial South Wales, at the 1983 general election and was defeated by Ioan Evans. A year later in 1984, Evans died and Arbuthnot fought the resulting by-election, but he was again defeated by the Labour candidate, Ann Clwyd.

Arbuthnot was called to the Bar by Lincoln's Inn in 1975 and became a practising barrister. An active member of the Chelsea Conservative Association, he was elected a councillor of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in 1978, and remained a councillor until he was elected to the House of Commons in 1987. In 1980 he became the vice-chairman of the Chelsea Conservative Association.

James Norwich Arbuthnot, Baron Arbuthnot of Edrom, PC (born 4 August 1952), is a British Conservative Party politician. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Wanstead and Woodford from 1987 to 1997, and then MP for North East Hampshire from 1997 to 2015.

Arbuthnot was born in Deal, Kent, the second son of Sir John Arbuthnot, 1st Baronet, MP for Dover between 1950 and 1964, and Margaret Jean Duff. He was educated at Wellesley House School in Broadstairs and Eton College, where he was captain of School, before going up to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained a Law degree (BA) in 1974.

He is a direct descendant of James V of Scotland. He shares his middle name with his great grandfather, Vice-Admiral Norwich Duff (1792-1862). He and his wife have one son (The Hon. Alexander Arbuthnot, born 1986) and three daughters (The Hon. Kate Arbuthnot, born 1989; The Hon. Leaf Arbuthnot, born 1992; The Hon. Alice Arbuthnot, born 1998). Lord and Lady Arbuthnot divide their time between London and Berkshire.