Hugh Mackay, 14th Lord Reay

Who was Hugh Mackay, 14th Lord Reay?

Hugh William Mackay, 14th Lord Reay, Baron Mackay was a British politician and Conservative member of the House of Lords. He was the only male Lord of Parliament to sit in the House of Lords, the only female being the Lady Saltoun.

He was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford.

Lord Reay was the only son of Aeneas Alexander Mackay, 13th Lord Reay and succeeded to the title upon his father's death in 1963. Lord Reay had sat as an appointed Member of the European Parliament from 1973 until the first elections in 1979.

Lord Reay was subsequently appointed as a House of Lords whip in 1989 by Margaret Thatcher. In 1991, he was moved by her successor, John Major, to the Department of Trade and Industry as a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, but he left the government at the 1992 general election.

With the passage of the House of Lords Act 1999, Lord Reay along with almost all other hereditary peers lost his automatic right to sit in the House of Lords, however, he was one of the 92 elected hereditary peers to remain in the House of Lords pending completion of House of Lords reform.

Lord Reay was the hereditary Clan Chief of Clan Mackay, and Lord of Ophemert and Zennewijnen in the Netherlands.