Andrew Lansley

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Andrew Lansley

Andrew David Lansley, CBE, (born 11 December 1956) is a politician in the United Kingdom. He is Conservative Member of Parliament for South Cambridgeshire. He was first elected in the 1997 general election.

Before politics Lansley was a civil servant. He worked for Norman Tebbit in 1984 as his private secretary at the Department of Trade and Industry. This encompassed the period of the Brighton IRA terrorist attack at the Conservative Party Conference in which Tebbit was seriously injured. Lansley and others are praised by Tebbit for their support at that time.

Lansley went on to became more fully involved in politics. In 1990 was appointed to run the Conservative Research Department. He remained there until after the successful 1992 election. He suffered a minor stroke in 2002, but made a full recovery save from permanently losing his sense of "fine balance" and now cannot ski. He then sought to enter parliament himself and was selected for the South Cambridgeshire seat where he was subsequently elected as an MP in 1997.

At the 2001 election he again took on a strategy role as a Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party. As part of his duties Shadow Ministers had to clear the timing of their announcements with Lansley. He would fit to them into a timetable that became know as the 'Stalingrid'. The 2001 election was not a success for the Conservative Party and the then-leader, William Hague, resigned in its wake. Iain Duncan Smith, the new leader, offered Lansley a position after the election but was turned down and, until Michael Howard became leader, Lansley was a backbencher. However with Howard's election he soon returned to the Conservative frontbench. He currently serves as the Shadow Secretary of State for Health. In his post he has developed policies centred on using choice to improve the National Health Service. He is the author of a chapter in The Future of the NHS (2006) (ISBN 1-85811-369-5).