Topic: Edward Leigh

Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (born 20 July 1950) is a UK politician. He sits in the British House of Commons as Conservative Member of Parliament for Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, to which he was first elected in 1983, although the constituency was named Gainsborough and Horncastle between 1983 and 1997. He has served as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee since 2001. Apart from being dubbed "the Viscount" upon his arrival in the Commons, a reference to his landed gentry background, he is next best known for his opposition to abortion, contraception and genetic research and for his defence of Section 28, which prohibited local authorities from "promot the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship".

He was educated at The Oratory School, the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle (the French school in London), before going up to University College, Durham where he read History (BA Hons) and became President of the Durham Union Society. Before entering politics, he qualified as a barrister of the Inner Temple, and practised in arbitration and criminal law as a member of Goldsmiths Chambers. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. Leigh was elected a member of Richmond Borough Council and then of the Greater London Council, serving as Councillor between 1974 and 1981.

Edward Leigh is a son of the late Sir Neville Leigh KCVO, a former Clerk to the Privy Council, of the West Hall, High Legh family, and a nephew of Princess Nikolai Galitzine. He has six children (sons Benedict, Nicholas, Theodore, born 1988, 1994 and 1997, and daughters Natalia, Tamara and Marina, born 1985, 1987 and 1990) by his wife, Mary Goodman, the grandniece of George, Duke of Mecklenburg, whom he married on September 25, 1984 in London. A descendant of King Henry VII himself through his Egerton ancestors, his wife is a descendant of Sophia, Electress of Hanover, making his children about 600th in the line of succession to the British throne.