The Right Honourable Lord Hutton of Furness was the Member of Parliament for Barrow and Furness from 1992 to 2010.  He is now the Chairman of the Royal United Services Institute.

Having completed his legal studies at Oxford in 1978, John Hutton started his career working as a Legal Officer for the Confederation of British Industry.  He subsequently took up academic appointments at Templeton College Oxford and the University of Northumbria where he was a Senior Law Lecturer before becoming an MP 1992.

John Hutton became a Minister in the Department of Health in 1998. He joined the British Cabinet in 2005. During his four years in the Cabinet, he was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Secretary of State for Business and Enterprise and finally, Secretary of State for Defence.

During his time in Government he was responsible for significant new policy developments in the area of public services, including an expanded role for the private sector in the delivery of health care, as we as radical reform of the pensions and welfare systems. At the Business and Enterprise Department, he pushed forward the UK’s policy on nuclear energy. In addition to his responsibility at Defence for operations in Afghanistan, he worked on procurement reform.