Chris Huhne

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Biography

Chris is an immensely knowledgeable and credible political speaker, passionate about environmental issues both in developing countries and established economies. Chris is recognised as an award winning economics columnist in the national press. Chris has been Eastleigh’s MP for five years and is currently the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.

Chris is unusual among modern politicians because he had much experience outside politics before being elected. Chris was an economic and financial journalist for nineteen years, and a City economist for five years, before being elected as a member of the European Parliament in 1999.

After Oxford University, Chris won his trade union card as a journalist by reporting under cover from India during Mrs Gandhi's emergency, at a time when all other western journalists had been expelled. His travels around India gave him an abiding interest in third world development. In 1977, Chris became Britain's youngest staff foreign correspondent when posted to Brussels by The Economist, where he covered the European Union and the world trade talks. During his time at The Economist, Chris first appreciated the disastrous impact of poor environmental policy when he saw deforestation and desertification in Tanzania.

Chris wrote an award-winning economics column every week for ten years, first for the Guardian and then for the Independent on Sunday, and went on to edit the business sections of both the Independent and Independent on Sunday. He won the prestigious Wincott award both as junior and as senior financial journalist of the year. In 1994, Chris founded what became one of the largest teams of economists in the City, to rate the risks of overseas investments for pension funds and other investors.

During Chris's time in the European Parliament, he was the economic spokesman for the pan-European Liberal group and showed that he could put together cross-party coalitions to reform Europe. Chris forced the European Central Bank to become more open, publishing forecasts every six months. Chris also proposed and won support for the first "sunset clauses" - time limits on the EU Commission's powers - introduced into EU law. Chris radically changed the EU Commission's proposals for financial services laws that would have penalised small business.

After Chris’s election in 2005, Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader at the time, asked Chris to become Vince Cable’s deputy as Treasury spokesman for the party.
Chris ran for the leadership of the Liberal Democrats in early 2006, highlighting the need for fair and green taxes to help hard-working families and tackle climate change. He was the runner-up to Sir Menzies Campbell, who then appointed him Shadow Environment Food and Rural Affairs Secretary. Chris ran for the leadership again in Autumn 2007 following the resignation of Sir Menzies, coming second to Nick Clegg in December 2007. Chris then became Shadow Home Secretary speaking for the party on crime, policing, immigration and terrorism.

Chris chaired the Liberal Democrat Public Services Policy commission on reform of public services like health and education, and his proposals for more local control over the National Health Service are a key part of Liberal Democrat policy. He also chaired the expert group on Britain's adoption of the euro, and was co-chairman of the policy panel on global sustainability, stability and security that looked at key issues like global warming. Chris was the Liberal Democrat economic adviser during the general election campaign of 1997, and for many years was a non-executive director of Electoral Reform (Ballot services) Ltd, the money-spinning company that funds campaigning for fair votes.

Chris has written numerous books and publications, mainly on the themes of third world debt and development, European integration and the Euro, and general economics. In his 1990 book "Real World Economics", Chris was an early advocate of tackling global warming. He has also contributed many articles to collections on British politics and policy, including an article about the reform of the United Nations and globalisation to the "Orange Book: Reclaiming Liberalism" (2004). Chris also wrote a weekly column about Europe for the London Evening Standard from 1999 to 2002.

Chris was educated at Westminster School, at the Université de Paris-Sorbonne and at Magdalen College, Oxford University, where he took first class honours in Politics, Philosophy and Economics.

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