He returned to England in 1945, and was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for
Huntingdonshire in the
1945 general election, as a
Liberal National. During his time in the Commons, the party merged with the Conservatives at constituency level (and changed their name to "National Liberal", with Renton using the label "National Liberal and Conservative" in elections from 1950 onwards). In 1968, he was one of the final three National Liberal MPs who opted to wind up the party and become a full part of the
Conservatives. He continued to practise law throughout his political career, and became a
QC in 1954. He befriended
Margaret Roberts (later Thatcher) when she was a student at Lincoln's Inn in 1950. He became a
bencher in 1962, and served as Treasurer in 1979. He was
Recorder of
Rochester from 1963 to 1968 and Recorder of
Guildford from 1968 to 1973. He was vice-chairman of the
Council of Legal Education from 1968 to 1973, and served as a member of the
Senate of Inns of Court. Renton joined the British delegation to draft the
European Convention on Human Rights in 1950. He became a junior minister in the governments of
Sir Anthony Eden and
Harold Macmillan in the 1950s, serving as
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the
Ministry of Fuel and Power under
Aubrey Jones from 1955 to 1957, and then at the
Minister of Power from 1957 to 1958, where he assisted to pass the
Clean Air Act. He moved to the
Home Office as
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State from 1958 to 1961 and then as
Minister of State from 1961 to 1962. Serving under
Home Secretary Rab Butler, he pushed through acts including the
Life Peerages Act 1958, the
Street Offences Act 1958 and the
Commonwealth Immigration Act 1962. He was sacked in the
Night of the Long Knives in July 1962, but received the consolation of being sworn of the
Privy Council. He later sat on a number of House of Commons committees. He was appointed a
Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in 1964, and won an
RSPCA bronze medal the same year for rescuing horses and pigs from a fire hear his home. He supported Britain joining the
European Community, but later supported the
Save the Pound campaign. In 1971, he was a member of the
Kilbrandon Commission, the
Royal Commission on the Constitution, which rejected complete self-government for Scotland and Wales, suggesting instead a limited form of devolution. At the invitation of
Ted Heath, he chaired the Committee on Preparation of Legislation which reviewed the methods for drafting
Acts of Parliament. The Renton Report was published in 1975, recommending drafting that was more based on principles than specific details to address every possible situation. He served as
Deputy Lieutenant for Huntingdonshire in 1962, for
Huntingdon and Peterborough in 1964, and for
Cambridgeshire in 1974. He stood down from his Huntingdonshire seat at the
1979 general election, and was created a
life peer on 11 July 1979, taking his seat in the
House of Lords as
Baron Renton,
of Huntingdon in the County of Cambridgeshire. His successor as MP for Huntingdonshire was the future Conservative Prime Minister
John Major. Renton was a deputy speaker in the House of Lords from 1982 to 1988.
Later career Renton was elected president of the
Association of Conservative Peers in 1998, unopposed, and became life president in 2003. He was the oldest peer in the House of Lords from 4 April 2004 until his death. He played cricket for the
Lords and Commons Cricket Club until he was 66, and hunted until he was 70. He continued to shoot until he was 91, when he had a heart valve replaced. He was a leader in the movement to preserve the traditions of the House of Lords, including lifelong membership for members of the Peerage. According to
The Washington Post in 2005, Renton maintained that "the genius of the upper house is that it includes world-renowned experts in law, science and the arts who would never run for election", and that "Democracy has its limitations". His memoirs,
The Spice of Life, were published in 2006. ==Personal life==