John Cope, Baron Cope of Berkeley

John Cope, Baron Cope of Berkeley

John Ambrose Cope, Baron Cope of Berkeley (born May 13, 1937 ) is a British Conservative Party politician who was a member of the House of Commons for 23 years and, among other things, Paymaster General .

Life

Member of the House of Commons

After attending Oakham School , he worked as an accountant . Cope, who had run unsuccessfully for a seat in the House of Commons in the general election of June 18, 1970 in the constituency of Woolwich East , was first elected as a member of the House of Commons in the general election of February 28, 1974 , where he initially represented the Gloucestershire South constituency , before he represented Northavon constituency after the general election from June 9, 1983 to May 1, 1997 .

During his long membership in parliament he was Whip from 1979 to 1983 and then from 1983 to 1987 Deputy Chief Whip and thus Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the government group of the Conservative Tories and at the same time between 1983 and 1987 Deputy Chairman of the influential House of Commons Committee on Ways and Means ( Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means ).

In 1987 he took over his first government office after being appointed Minister of State in the Ministry of Employment, where he was responsible for small businesses. He was then Minister of State for Northern Ireland between 1989 and 1990, making him one of Northern Ireland Minister Peter Brooke's closest collaborators .

He was then Deputy Executive Chairman from 1990 to 1992 and at the same time Treasurer of the Conservative Party from 1991 to 1992, before he was a member of the extended cabinet of Prime Minister John Major from 1992 to 1994 as Paymaster General . From 1995 to 1997 he was also a member of the British delegation to the Parliamentary Assemblies of the Council of Europe and the Western European Union (WEU).

In the general election of May 1, 1997 , he suffered a defeat in which he lost 11.3% of the vote compared to the 1992 election and lost his mandate to his liberal-democratic challenger Steve Webb , who received 42.4 percent of the vote while he accounted for only 39.0%.

Member of the House of Lords

On October 4, 1997, he was raised to the nobility as a Life Peer with the title Baron Cope of Berkeley , of Berkeley in the County of Gloucestershire, and has been a member of the House of Lords ever since .

During his tenure there he was opposition spokesman for Northern Ireland from 1997 to 1998 and then for home affairs from 1998 to 2001. He was then from 2001 to 2007 as opposition chief Whip Parliamentary Chief Executive of the conservative opposition faction in the upper house and from 2001 to 2007 also deputy chairman of the committees of the upper house and between 2002 and 2008 deputy speaker of the house of lords .

Cope, who has been a member of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly since 2008 and co-chairman since 2010, is also a trustee of the Conservative Party Archives at the University of Oxford's Bodleian Library and the War Memorials Trust, and director of the prestigious Carlton in London Club .

Web links

• Entry on the homepage of the British Parliament (accessed December 27, 2011)
• Sir John Cope at Hansard (English)
• Entry in They Work For You
• Entry in They Work For You