Richard Baker

Who is Richard Baker?

Richard Baker is a Scottish Labour politician, and member of the Scottish Parliament for the North East Scotland region. He was first elected in the 2003 general election, when he was the youngest sitting MSP, and is Labour's Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure and Capital Investment in the Scottish Parliament. He was previously their Finance spokesperson.

Baker was born in Edinburgh to an Episcopalian priest father and English teacher mother, and is godson to the then Episcopalian Bishop of Aberdeen. He was educated at the independent St. Bees School in Cumbria and at Aberdeen University.

He was the elected President of the National Union of Students Scotland from 1998 till 2000, having previously been the North of Scotland Area Convener for that union, and before that the Senior Vice-President at the University of Aberdeen Students' Representative Council in the academic year 1995/96.

In 2004 he was a member of the Scottish Parliament team in the TV general knowledge program, University Challenge — The Professionals. He and fellow team members Robin Harper, Jamie Stone who was captain, and Stewart Stevenson beat a Welsh Assembly team by 110 points to 75. Both teams comfortably surpassed the record low score of 25 achieved by the House of Commons team in 2003.