Patrick Jenkin, Baron Jenkin of Roding

Who is Patrick Jenkin, Baron Jenkin of Roding?

Charles Patrick Fleeming Jenkin, Baron Jenkin of Roding, PC is a British Conservative politician and the great-grandson of the scientist Fleeming Jenkin.

Jenkin was educated at the Dragon School in Oxford, Clifton College in Bristol and Jesus College at Cambridge. He became a barrister, called by the Middle Temple in 1952, and company director. He was a councillor on Hornsey Borough Council 1960–63.

Jenkin was the Conservative MP for Woodford from 1964 to 1974 and, after constituency boundary changes, for Wanstead and Woodford from 1974 to 1987, and served as an Opposition spokesman on economic and trade affairs from 1965. He has been a member of the Bow Group since 1951. In January 1974 he became Minister for Energy just weeks before the Conservatives fell from office, and participated in many ways in the government of Margaret Thatcher. He served as Secretary of State for Social Services from 1979 to 1981, then as Secretary of State for Industry until 1983, and finally as Secretary of State for the Environment from 1983 to 1985. He was elevated to the House of Lords as a life peer with the title Baron Jenkin of Roding, of Wanstead and Woodford in Greater London in 1987.