24 Facts About David Heathcoat-Amory

David Philip Heathcoat-Amory was born on 21 March 1949 and is a British politician, accountant, and farmer.

David Heathcoat-Amory was the Conservative Member of Parliament for Wells from 1983 until he lost the seat in the 2010 general election.

David Heathcoat-Amory became a member of the British Privy Council in 1996.

David Heathcoat-Amory is the son of British Army Brigadier Roderick Heathcoat-Amory, MC and the nephew of Harold Macmillan's Chancellor of the Exchequer Derick Heathcoat-Amory.

David Heathcoat-Amory was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, University of Oxford, where he received an MA in PPE.

David Heathcoat-Amory was President of the Oxford University Conservative Association.

David Heathcoat-Amory contested the London Borough of Brent seat at Brent South at the 1979 general election but was defeated by the sitting Labour MP Laurence Pavitt by 11,616 votes.

David Heathcoat-Amory was elected to the House of Commons at the 1983 general election for the Somerset seat of Wells, whose sitting MP Robert Boscawen had decided to move to Somerton and Frome following boundary changes.

David Heathcoat-Amory held the seat with a majority of 6,575.

David Heathcoat-Amory was promoted to become a Lord Commissioner to the Treasury and Government Whip in 1989.

David Heathcoat-Amory was appointed as the Treasurer of the Household following the 1992 general election and was the Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1993.

David Heathcoat-Amory was appointed as the Paymaster General in 1994 where he served until resigning from the government in 1996 over the single European currency.

David Heathcoat-Amory became a member of the Privy Council in 1996.

In 1997 David Heathcoat-Amory joined the shadow cabinet of William Hague as the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and was the Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry from 2000.

David Heathcoat-Amory left the frontbench on the election of Iain Duncan Smith as the leader of the Conservative Party in 2001.

David Heathcoat-Amory was a member of the Treasury Select committee from 2004 until he was briefly, in 2005, a spokesman on work and pensions under the leadership of Michael Howard, but returned to the backbenches later in the year when David Cameron became Conservative leader.

David Heathcoat-Amory served as the chairman of the all party group on the British Museum; the vice chair of the group on astronomy and space environment; and the secretary of the group on boxing.

From late 2001 until July 2003, David Heathcoat-Amory was one of the two British parliamentary delegates to the Convention on the Future of Europe, which drafted the European Constitution.

David Heathcoat-Amory is well known for his strong euroscepticism and was, through the work of the Convention, a fierce opponent of the official drafts being prepared by the presidium of the Convention, criticising them as being too federalist.

David Heathcoat-Amory was selected by the Power 2010 democracy and constitutional reform campaign as one of six MPs accused of "failing our democracy" and who "stand in the way of a reforming Parliament".

David Heathcoat-Amory partly blamed the presence of a UKIP candidate on the ballot paper for his defeat during his speech after the result of the ballot was announced.

David Heathcoat-Amory admitted that his involvement in the expenses scandal played a part in his defeat.

David Heathcoat-Amory was criticised in 2008 after remarking, regarding the presence of a Black MP, Dawn Butler, "They're letting anybody in nowadays".

David Heathcoat-Amory married Linda Adams on 4 February 1978 in north Hampshire.