Alan Howarth, Baron Howarth of Newport

Alan Thomas Howarth, Baron Howarth of Newport, (11 June 1944 – 10 September 2025) was a British Labour Party politician and life peer, who was a member of Parliament (MP) from 1983 to 2005. First elected as a Conservative before defecting to Labour in 1995, he served as a minister in both Labour and Conservative governments. He sat in the House of Lords as a Labour life peer.

Early life

Alan Howarth was the son of Major Thomas Howarth MC (Chief Master of King Edward's School, Birmingham, Second Master of Winchester College and High Master of St. Paul's School) and Margaret Teakle (who was a Wren in the Second World War). He was educated at Rugby School and gained a BA in History from King's College, Cambridge in 1965.

Howarth subsequently worked in the Conservative Party Chairman's office in Conservative Central Office under Willie Whitelaw and Peter Thorneycroft, before becoming director of the Conservative Research Department and party vice-chairman.

Parliamentary career Having been appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1982 New Year Honours for political service, Howarth was Conservative Party MP for Stratford-on-Avon, first elected in 1983. He was a founder member of the Thatcherite No Turning Back group. He served as a whip, and was subsequently Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science from 1989 to 1992, becoming the architect of the polytechnics' transition to university status. In a House of Lords debate on the outcome of the European Union Referendum on 5 July 2016, Lord Howarth announced his support for Britain's departure from the European Union.

Personal life and death Howarth married Gillian Chance in 1967. They had two daughters (born 1974 and 1975) and two sons (born 1977 and April 1985). They divorced in 1996. He was later the partner of Labour peer Patricia Hollis who died in 2018. Howarth died from cancer on 10 September 2025, at the age of 81.