John Home Robertson
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John Home Robertson (born December 5, 1948) is a Labour politician in Scotland. He is currently a Member of the Scottish Parliament for East Lothian after having served as a member of Parliament from 1978 to 2001.
Home Robertson was born in Edinburgh and educated at Ampleforth College in Yorkshire and at the West of Scotland Agricultural College. He married Catherine Brewster in 1977 and they have two grown-up sons. Before his election to Parliament, he ran his family farm in Berwickshire, and he was a member of Berwickshire District Council from 1974-78. As a delegate to the Labour Party Conference in 1976, he moved the resolution which committed the Party to devolution for Scotland, and throughout his career at Westminster he campaigned for the establishment of the Scottish Parliament.
Home Robertson was the successful Labour candidate at the Berwick & East Lothian by-election in 1978, following the death of John P Mackintosh. He represented that constituency until 1983, and then he returned to the House of Commons for the new constituency of East Lothian until 2001. At Westminster, Home Robertson served on the Scottish and Defence Select Committees. He also spent time as an Opposition Whip, as Labour Front Bench Spokesman on Agriculture and Scottish Affairs and as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to Dr Jack Cunningham at the Ministry of Agriculture and then at the Cabinet Office.
One of Home Robertson's forebears was a Member of the (original) Scottish Parliament for Berwickshire in 1707 who opposed the Act of Union. In 1988, Home Robertson gave his family's historic home, Paxton House, to the nation. It is managed for the public by the Paxton Trust, and is a Partner Gallery of the National Galleries of Scotland.
After his election to the Scottish Parliament in 1999, John was the Scottish Executive Deputy Minister for Rural Affairs, with responsibility for fisheries and forestry in Donald Dewar's administration. In 2001 he took on convenership of the Holyrood Progress Group, which had responsibility for overseeing the completion of the Scottish Parliament Building project. He is now a member of the Communities Committee and the European and External Relations Committee in the Parliament
See Also
- MPs elected in the UK general election, 1983
- MPs elected in the UK general election, 1987
- MPs elected in the UK general election, 1992
- MPs elected in the UK general election, 1997
- List of Scottish Executive Ministerial Teams
External Links
- Scottish Parliament biography (http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/msp/membersPages/john_home_robertson/index.htm)
- Scottish Executive (http://www.scotland.gov.uk)Template:UK-politician-stub