1970–1997 Haselhurst was elected to the
House of Commons at the
1970 general election for the
Lancashire seat of
Middleton and Prestwich, defeating the sitting
Labour MP
Denis Coe by 1,042 votes. In parliament, he briefly served from 1973 as
Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the
Home Secretary Robert Carr, before losing his
seat in
February 1974. Haselhurst lost the seat to Labour by only 517 votes; he then served as the Chairman of the
Manchester Youth and Community Service from 1974 until 1977 upon re-entering the
Commons; the Conservative MP for the
Essex seat of
Saffron Walden,
Sir Peter Kirk, died on 17 April 1977. Selected to contest the resulting
by-election on 7 July, Haselhurst retained the seat for the Conservatives with an increased majority of 12,437, and was returned to Parliament as its MP at every subsequent election until his retirement in 2017. Following the Conservatives' return to power at the
1979 general election, Haselhurst was appointed as PPS to the
Secretary of State for Education and Science Mark Carlisle serving for two years from 1979. He served on the
European Legislation Select Committee for fifteen years from 1982, and was a member of the
Transport Select Committee from 1992 to 1997. He was given the privilege of asking the first question in
Margaret Thatcher's final
Prime Minister's Questions on 27 November 1990.
1997–2017 Following the
1997 general election, Haselhurst was elected
Chairman of Ways and Means (
Deputy Speaker), remaining in post under successive Speakers
Betty Boothroyd,
Michael Martin, and
John Bercow until May 2010. Haselhurst was a nominated candidate to
succeed Michael Martin after Martin's resignation as Commons Speaker on 19 May 2009. However, Haselhurst was among those who became embroiled in the
MPs' expenses controversy being highlighted by
The Daily Telegraph for claiming £12,000 in gardening expenses over four years, in the sum of £249 every month, despite naïvely taking advice from the Fees Office to simplify the submission of his expenses in this way; he made endeavours to wipe the slate clean by refunding these gardening expenses "out of respect to his constituents", withdrawing from the
Commons Speakership election having received 66 votes in the first round of voting, and 57 in the second. Haselhurst chose not to seek re-election as a Commons Deputy Speaker after the
2010 general election, since, by convention, the Chairman of Ways and Means should come from a different party affiliation than that of the
Speaker, he would only have been eligible to stand for First Deputy Chairman, junior to his previous office. Nevertheless, his fellow parliamentarians entrusted him to continue as
Interim Deputy Speaker chairing debates in the House of Commons during the period between the
State Opening of Parliament and its election of new
Deputy Speakers. On 27 July 2010, Haselhurst was elected Chairman of the House of Commons
Administration Committee, having been defeated in the election for Chairman of the
Backbench Business Committee by
Natascha Engel. In July 2010, Haselhurst became
Chairman of the
UK Commonwealth Parliamentary Association then, in the following year at the
Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference at London in July 2011, being elected Chairman of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association's
Executive Committee, serving until October 2014, and overseeing parliamentary procedure throughout the
Commonwealth. He succeeded the Malaysian
Datuk Seri Haji Shafie Apdal; the previous British parliamentarian elected to this post had been
Sir Colin Shepherd in 1996. Reselected as the Conservative Party candidate for the next election at a meeting of the local party association on 13 February 2014, Haselhurst was again returned to Parliament at the
2015 general election. A staunch opponent of
Brexit at the
2016 referendum, in April 2017, Haselhurst announced that he would not be contesting the
2017 general election, having initially indicated his intention to stand. About his change of mind he commented: "I feel now that my initial instinctive response was premature... I have begun to recognize that it might test the friendship and goodwill of so many people whose support I have enjoyed if I sought to do so for a further five years!" A supporter of community-based projects he was for a time a
Director of
Turning Point, a charity working with
socially-excluded young people. A
europhile and ally of
Kenneth Clarke, Lord Haselhurst has for a long time been regarded as a
one-nation Conservative.
House of Lords Nominated for elevation to the
peerage on 18 May 2018, he was created by
Letters Patent on 22 June,
Baron Haselhurst,
of Saffron Walden in the County of Essex, before being
introduced to the Upper House to sit on the Conservative benches. Lord Haselhurst retired from active politics in the
House of Lords on 20 December 2024. ==Honours==