Profiles of Officers

Chairman

Craig Tracey MP - Chairman

Craig started his own insurance brokerage business which he ran for 20 years before being elected as member of Parliament for his home constituency of North Warwickshire in June 2015

He lives in Shuttington, near Polesworth, and moved to North Warwickshire in 1997 where he met his wife Karen. He was born in Durham and attended the city’s Framwellgate Moor Comprehensive School. His family come from a mining background in the North East.

In the build up to the 2015 General Election the Financial Times described him as "the sort of candidate who hardly happens these days... totally apolitical until seven years ago when he became increasingly incensed by the effect on his business of EU regulations and Labour indifference".

He polled 20,042 votes in the 2015 General Election, a total of 42.3% of the vote. Despite North Warwickshire being Labour’s number one target seat, Craig significantly increased outgoing MP Dan Byles’ majority from just 54 votes to 2973 in one of the results of the night.

As well as chairing the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Insurance and Financial Services, Craig also chairs the APPG for Women and Enterprise and Co-Chairs the APPG for Breast Cancer. He is a member of the influential Business Energy and Industrial Strategy Select Committee, drawing on his experience of running a small business and the insurance industry.

Craig has worked in parliament with charities Breast Cancer Now and Help for Heroes.

Craig also campaigns against HS2 and its devastating impact on his local constituency. 

Deputy Chairmen

Rt Hon Lord Hunt of Wirral MBE - Deputy Chairman

Elected Conservative Member of Parliament for Wirral at a by-election in March 1976 and spent 21 years as an MP. In 1979, he became a member of Margaret Thatcher's first administration - serving as Parliamentary Private Secretary to John Nott, first at Trade and then at Defence. Served as a Whip, then as Coal Minister.

DeputyChief Whip 1987-89

Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities 1989-90

Secretary of State for Wales 1990-93

Secretary of State for Employment 1993

Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (and Minister for Public Service and Science) in 1994

As a Member of the House of Lords, he often represents the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Insurance and Financial Services and is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences on insurance and reinsurance

President of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Occupational Health and Safety

Chairman of the Inter-Parliamentary Council Against Racism and Anti-Semitism

Trustee of the Holocaust Educational Trust and Vice Chairman of the War Crimes Group

Awarded the MBE in 1973 and appointed to the Privy Council in 1990. He was made a Life Peer as Lord Hunt of Wirral in 1997

Educated at Liverpool College, then graduated in Law from Bristol University. President of the Atlantic Association of Young Political Leaders and Chairman of the British Youth Council. Deputy Chairman of The English Speaking Union. Senior Partner of Beachcroft Wansbroughs.

He advises the Association of British Insurers. He led the legal teams which established PASS (the Pension Advisers' Support System), the Pensions Protection Investments Accreditation Board (PPIAB) and its Raising Standards Quality Mark, and the Association of Independent Financial Advisers (AIFA). He served as the first chairman of AIFA from 1999 to 2002.

He is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries and an honorary fellow of the International Institute of Risk and Safety Management In 2004 he became the first independent chairman of the Professional Standards Board of the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII). Trustee of the British Occupational Health Research Foundation.

Co-founded- and served as the first chairman of - the Case Management Society UK (CMSUK).

He started as a trainee solicitor with one of the predecessor firms of Beachcroft Wansbroughs. From 1965, he was articled to a former President of the Law Society, Sir Denys Hicks; and, after admission as a solicitor, was made a Partner in 1968. He became Senior Partner in 1996 and has been re-elected for a further term of three years to 2006.

In the autumn of 2011 he was appointed Chairman of the Press Complaints Commission.

David is married with four children.

Louise Haigh - Deputy Chairman

Louise Haigh was born and grew up in Sheffield. She joined both the Labour Party and a trade union in Sheffield when she started her first job - working as a call centre worker on a zero hours contract.

Louise moved to Nottingham for University where she worked for the local council, training Youth Workers on how to deal with issues such as teen pregnancy, drug and alcohol misuse and child protection.

She later worked in Westminster where she took up Coalfield issues for communities decimated by the Tory government of the 1980s, supported a Shadow Minister to raise problems in our child protection system and ran an inquiry into young people, education and care.

She has worked for Aviva as a public policy officer, responsible for corporate governance and responsible investment policy.

Lord Newby - Deputy Chairman

Grew up in a Labour stronghold and was a member of the Labour Party at university and in several London Boroughs. During the 1975 European referendum, he was General Secretary of Young European Left, the pro-European youth wing of the Labour Party.

He worked for the Social Democratic Party (SDP) for its whole life and was its chief executive from 1983-88. He has worked on all subsequent Lib Dem General Election campaigns, as press officer to Paddy Ashdown (1992), Deputy Campaign Chairman (1997) and subsequently as a member of the Campaigns and Communications Committee. He was Charles Kennedy's Chief of Staff during his period as Leader.

Outside politics he has been a tax man (HM Customs and Excise 1974-81), corporate affairs director of a property company (Rosehaugh 1988-92) and a PR/public affairs adviser (1992-2001). Now Chair of Live Consulting, a corporate responsibility consultancy. Chair of Sport at The Prince's Trust and a Trustee of International Development through Sport (IDS UK). Non-executive director of Elmwood Design Ltd.

He was born in Rothwell, West Yorkshire and attended Rothwell Grammar School before studying Politics, Philosophy and Economics at St Catherine's College Oxford. He is married to Ailsa - a Church of England vicar - and has two university-aged sons.

Lord Newby has been a spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats in the Lords for the Treasury.

Corporate responsibility

Chairman of Live Consulting, adviser on corporate responsibility

Vice-Chairman, Parliamentary All Party Corporate Responsibility Group

Vice-Chairman, Parliamentary All-Party Social enterprise Group

Economy

Former Customs and Excise Tax Policy Adviser

Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesperson 1999 - 2009

Small Businesses

Founder of Live Consulting (2001)

Non-Executive Director of Elmwood Design Ltd

Culture, Media and Sport

Chair of Sport at the Prince's Trust for 11 years;

Chair of IDS (UK Sport's International Development Charity);

Through his company - Live Consulting – has run sport and education programmes in the Caribbean and South Africa

Hon Secretary

Sir Edward Leigh MP - Hon Secretary

Edward Leigh was born in London in 1950. He was educated at St Philips School, London, the Oratory School, Berkshire, and the Lycée Français in London. He studied History at Durham University, where he was president of the Durham Union Society.

He is the younger son of Sir Neville Leigh KCVO, former clerk to the Privy Council. He is married, with three daughters and three sons.

Edward is a qualified barrister and a member of the Inner Temple, and practised in arbitration and criminal law for Goldsmiths Chambers. He is also a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators.

Edward was a member of the Richmond Borough Council and, from 1974 until 1981, the Greater London Council.

Mr Leigh worked in the private office of Mrs Thatcher from 1976–77 as private secretary in charge of her correspondence as Leader of the Opposition.

He fought Teesside Middlesborough in the October 1974 General Election. He was elected as a Member of Parliament for Gainsborough & Horncastle in the July 1983 General Election.

He was Joint Secretary of the Conservative Parliamentary Defence Committee and the Parliamentary Agriculture Committee from 1983-85.

Edward was Chairman of the National Council for Civil Defence and was Director of the Coalition for Peace Through Security, until early 1985.

From 1990-1993, Mr Leigh was a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State in the Department of Trade and Industry. Prior to that he was a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Home Office.

In May 1997 he was elected Member of Parliament for the new seat of Gainsborough, with a majority of 6826. After hovering around 8000 in the 2001 & 2005 elections, his majority rose to 10,559 in the general election of 2010.

Edward Leigh is a former member of the Social Security Select Committee and was Joint Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee. Between 2001 and 2010 he was Chairman of the influential Public Accounts Committee — a role he relinquished after serving the maximum term.

He was knighted in the Queen's Birthday Honours in June 2013.