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The Rt Hon Lord David Trefgarne

Lord Trefgarne was educated at Haileybury College and Princeton University, USA. He improved his French by working on the production line of Renault in France as an engineering apprentice.

He succeeded to the peerage when he was in his early twenties, making him one of the youngest peers with a seat in the House of Lords. As a young man he had a great spirit of adventure and flew a single engine aeroplane from England to Australia with Charles Masefield (now Sir Charles) as a co-pilot.  He purchased a second 'plane in Australia for the return journey, for which achievement he was awarded (jointly) the Bronze Medal of the Royal Aero Club.

Later, he and Sir Charles founded a small commercial freight airline and, still later, he became a commercial airline pilot. Being a commercial pilot gave him sufficient spare time to undertake some Parliamentary duties and he became an Opposition Whip in the House of Lords in 1977.

With the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 he joined the Government, initially as a Lord-in-Waiting but subsequently held ministerial office in the Department of Trade with the Foreign Office, and the Department of Health and Social Security. He next moved to the Ministry of Defence as Under Secretary for the Armed Forces and latterly Minister for Defence Procurement. With the Ministry of Defence he was able to fly many of the planes in the Royal Air Force.

Lord Trefgarne moved from the Ministry of Defence to become Minister of State for Trade in 1989, in which year he was also appointed to Her Majesty's Privy Council. He left Government at his own request in 1990 to pursue a business career and became a Director of Siebe plc and AWD Bedford, as well as President of METCOM. He became Chairman of EMTA (now SEMTA), the National Training Organisation for Engineering Manufacture, in 1994.

David remains an active member of the House of lords and was one of the few hereditary peers elected to remain there in 1999, securing a third place in the ballot. He became Chairman of the Association of Conservative Peers in 2000 and speaks regularly in the House on defence, economic, engineering, aviation and Constitutional matters.

He is still an active aviator and flies his own DeHavilland Dove aeroplane.