Topic: Malcolm Wicks

Malcolm Hunt Wicks (born 1 July 1947, Hatfield, Hertfordshire) is Labour Member of Parliament for Croydon North and serves as the Prime Minister's special representative on international energy issues.

Wicks was born in Hatfield, Hertfordshire to Arthur Wicks, a Labour member of the London County Council and later Greater London Council. He was educated at the independent Elizabeth College, Guernsey; North West London Polytechnic and the London School of Economics gaining a BSc in Sociology.

From 1968-70, he was a research fellow of the Department of Social Administration at the University of York, then a research worker at the Centre for Environmental Studies from 1970-2. Wicks worked in the Urban Deprivation Unit (abolished in 1978) of the Home Office as a social policy analyst from 1974-77, and was a lecturer in Social Administration at Brunel University from 1970-74. From 1977-8, he was a lecturer in Social Policy at the Civil Service College (now called the National School of Government) in Ascot, then research director and secretary of the Study Commission on the Family from 1978-83. He was later Director of the Family Policy Studies Centre from 1983-92, then the co-director of the European Family and Social Policy Unit. He has been the author and co-author of many publications, including a work on hypothermia, Old and Cold: hypothermia and social policy. His keen concern about fuel poverty led to him to act as a Trustee of the National Energy Foundation (1988-94).