1. Syed Salah Kamall, Baron Kamall was born on 15 February 1967 and is a British politician and academic, who from September to October 2022 served in HM Government as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
Syed Kamall was previously Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Innovation at the Department of Health and Social Care.
Professor of Politics and International Relations at St Mary's University, Twickenham, Lord Kamall is the academic and research director at the Institute of Economic Affairs, a classical liberal think tank based in London.
Syed Kamall represented London as a Member of the European Parliament for the Conservative Party from 2005 to 2019, serving on the International Trade and Economic and Monetary Affairs Committees.
From 2013 to 2014, Syed Kamall served as Leader of the Conservatives in the European Parliament, then as Leader of the European Conservatives and Reformists, from June 2014 till 2019.
Syed Kamall was born in Hornsey and brought up in Edmonton, London.
Syed Kamall is a Muslim, and of Indo-Guyanese descent; his father migrated to London from Guyana in the 1950s.
Syed Kamall started his career as a business systems analyst for NatWest Overseas Department.
Syed Kamall was elected a Visiting Fellow of Leeds University Business School in 2004 where he lectured MBA students on international business and strategy, and supervised doctoral students' research.
Syed Kamall is a co-founder of the Global Business Research Institute, an educational body conducting outreach to business executives, journalists and civil servants, promoting a greater understanding of globalisation and its consequences.
Syed Kamall has been a member of the Conservatives since 1987 and has held various positions in the party since then: Chairman, Stockwell Ward, Vauxhall Conservative Association; Hon.
In May 2000, Syed Kamall was a Conservative Candidate for the London Assembly.
Syed Kamall was placed fourth on the Conservative list in London for the 2004 European Parliament elections.
The Conservatives won three seats and Syed Kamall became a Member of the European Parliament in May 2005, after Theresa Villiers stepped down on being elected as an MP to the UK Parliament.
Syed Kamall was placed on the "A-list" of Conservative parliamentary candidates ahead of the 2010 election and was again returned to Brussels in 2014 representing London as an MEP.
Syed Kamall is a contributor to the free market public policy think tank The Cobden Centre, one of Europe's pre-eminent think tanks based around the Austrian School of economics.
In 2016, Syed Kamall backed voting to leave the European Union in the run up to the Brexit referendum.
In October 2018, during a debate in which Udo Bullmann, the German leader of the Socialists and Democrats Group linked the political right to extremism, Syed Kamall responded by saying that Nazis were National Socialists who followed left wing policies.
On 17 September 2021, Lord Syed Kamall was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Innovation at the Department for Health and Social Care, in the second Cabinet reshuffle of the second Johnson ministry.
Syed Kamall was chosen to present the Royal Armills to the King at the 2023 Coronation.
In 1996, Syed Kamall wrote a book on EU telecommunications policy, and has written on multinational business and telecommunications policy for such books as Management in China: The Experience of Foreign Businesses; Trade and Investment in China: The European Experience; Political and Economic Relations Between Asia and Europe: New Challenges in Economics and Management, and in such journals as Management International Review and Transnational Corporations.
Syed Kamall follows Islam, and, in 1997, married Sandira Bye Beekoo, a fellow Conservative.