Anthony Stodart, Baron Stodart of Leaston

Who was Anthony Stodart, Baron Stodart of Leaston?

James Anthony Stodart, Baron Stodart of Leaston PC was a Scottish Tory politician.

The son of a colonel in the Indian medical service, he took over the family farm at Kingston, North Berwick, East Lothian, after his father died when he was just 18. Eventually he farmed more than 800 acres at Leaston, near Humbie, East Lothian.

Although he was an active Unionist in his youth, he fell out with the party and joined the Liberal Party, standing as their candidate in Berwick and East Lothian in 1950.

By the following year Stodart had returned to the Tory fold and was Unionist candidate for Midlothian and Peebles in 1951 for and Midlothian in 1955.

At the 1959 general election, he was elected as Member of Parliament for Edinburgh West, which he held until the October 1974 general election, when he was succeeded by fellow Tory Lord James Douglas-Hamilton.

Stodart served as a junior Scottish Office Minister under Sir Alec Douglas-Home in 1963 and 1964, and at the Ministry of Agriculture in Edward Heath’s government, from 1970 to 1974.

After leaving the House of Commons, he became chairman of the Agriculture Credit Corporation from 1975 to 1987 and chaired an inquiry into Scottish local government in 1980. He was created a life peer as Baron Stodart of Leaston, of Humbie in East Lothian in 1981.