Frederick Curzon

Frederick Curzon, Earl Howe, is a Conservative peer and Parliamentary under secretary of state for quality.

By trade a banker, he joined the Tory health team in 1997. His responsibilities include thorny ones such as PCT reform, commissioning, the NHS constitution, dentistry, NICE, and quangos.

Background

He was born in 1951. He was educated at Rugby School and Christ Church, Oxford, where he read Mods and Greats. After leaving University in 1973, he joined Barclays Bank and served in a number of managerial and senior managerial posts both overseas and in London. In 1987 he was appointed London director of Adam & Co. plc, the Scottish-based private bank, where he remained until 1990.

In 1991, Lord Howe became a government whip in the House of Lords with responsibilities, successively, for transport, employment, defence and environment. Following the General Election of 1992 he was appointed Parliamentary Secretary (Lords) at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food; and in 1995 Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Defence, a post he relinquished at the 1997 General Election.

Lobbying

In 2005, Lord Howe raised the issue of the EU regulation No 1924/2006 on nutrition and Health claims made on food, in the House of Lords. He asked about any regulatory impact assessments that had been carried out on the implementation of the regulation and what talks the Government had had with the EU Public Health Commissioner over the proposed Regulation whether they intended to discuss this regulation with the Commissioner while the UK held the EU presidency. He then asked about the benefits of the regulation. A point which the food industry had been campaigning on. Their stated position being that the regulation conferred no benefits for anyone.

This issue was heavily lobbied against by the Whitehouse Consultancy Ltd on behalf of several food companies. The Whitehouse consultancy are the PR company for The Obesity Awareness and Solutions Trust TOAST. Lord Howe was a patron of TOAST.