Terence Higgins, Baron Higgins facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
The Lord Higgins
|
|
|---|---|
Official portrait, 2018
|
|
| Financial Secretary to the Treasury | |
| In office 7 April 1972 – 4 March 1974 |
|
| Prime Minister | Edward Heath |
| Preceded by | Patrick Jenkin |
| Succeeded by | John Gilbert |
| Member of Parliament for Worthing |
|
| In office 15 October 1964 – 8 April 1997 |
|
| Preceded by | Otho Prior-Palmer |
| Succeeded by | constituency abolished |
| Member of the House of Lords Lord Temporal |
|
| In office 28 October 1997 – 1 January 2019 Life peerage |
|
| Personal details | |
| Born | 18 January 1928 |
| Political party | Conservative |
| Alma mater | Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge |
| Medal record | ||
|---|---|---|
| Men's athletics | ||
Representing  England |
||
| Commonwealth Games | ||
| Silver | 1950 Auckland | 4x440 yard relay |
Terence Langley Higgins, Baron Higgins, KBE, DL, PC (born 18 January 1928) is a British former Conservative Party politician and Commonwealth Games silver medalist winner for England. He also competed in the men's 400 metres at the 1952 Summer Olympics.
Biography
Born in 1928, Higgins was educated at Alleyn's School, Dulwich. He served in the Royal Air Force from 1946 to 1948, and was a member of British Olympic Team in 1948 and 1952. In 1948 he immigrated to New Zealand, where he worked for a shipping firm, but seven years later returned to Britain to study economics as a mature student at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. During his time at Cambridge, Higgins was President of the Cambridge Union. After graduating in 1958, he spent a year as an economics lecturer at Yale University before choosing to work for Unilever as an economist.
Higgins was the Member of Parliament for Worthing from 1964 to 1997, and Financial Secretary to the Treasury between 1972 and 1974. He became a Privy Councillor in 1979, and served on the Treasury Select Committee from 1979 to 1992 (serving as chairman from 1983 to 1992), and on the Liaison Committee from 1984 to 1997.
Higgins was created a life peer as Baron Higgins, of Worthing in the County of West Sussex on 28 October 1997. While in opposition, he served as the Conservative shadow minister for work and pensions in the House of Lords. He was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1993 New Years Honours List. Higgins retired from the House of Lords on 1 January 2019.
His wife, Dame Rosalyn Higgins, with whom he has two children, was the President of the International Court of Justice.
