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The Rt Hon. Peter Ainsworth
Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
In office 6 December 2005 – present
Leader	David Cameron
Preceded by	Tim Yeo
Succeeded by	Incumbent
In office 18 September 2001 – 23 July 2002
Preceded by	Archie Norman (Environment) Tim Yeo (Food)
Succeeded by	David Lidington
Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
In office 11 June 1997 – 18 September 2001
Preceded by	Francis Maude
Succeeded by	Tim Yeo
Born	November 16, 1956 (1956-11-16) (age 51) Wokingham, England
Political party	Conservative
Religion	Roman Catholic

Peter Michael Ainsworth (born 16 November 1956) is a British politician of the Conservative Party, the Member of Parliament for East Surrey and the Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

The son of a naval officer, he was educated at the Ludgrove School in Wokingham, Bradfield College, and Lincoln College, Oxford, he graduated in 1979 with a MA in English Literature and Language.

In the Spectator, Oct 21, 2000, Petronella Wyatt revealed that 'a broadsheet newspaper' had accused him of having had links with the National Front while an undergraduate at Oxford University.

He became a researcher to the former Conservative Member of the European Parliament, Sir John Stewart-Clark and on leaving University and then in 1981 became a merchant banker and married Claire Burnett in Hatfield, with whom he had a son (born December 1991) and two daughters (born August 1988 and July 1990). He worked as an investments analyst for Laing & Cruickshank Investment Management (bought by UBS in 2004) from 1981-5, then S.G. Warburg Securities (bought by UBS in 1994) from 1985-92, working in Corporate Finance, becoming a Director from 1990-2.

He was elected as a councillor to the London Borough of Wandsworth in 1986 and was elected at the 1992 General Election for East Surrey succeeding Sir Geoffrey Howe in the House of Commons.

In 1994 he became the Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Jonathan Aitken, and in 1995 became PPS to the Secretary of State for National Heritage, Virginia Bottomley. He was promoted by John Major in 1996 to the Whips' Office. When the Major government fell the following year. he remained a Whip in Opposition and was promoted to Deputy Chief Whip by William Hague. In 1998 he entered the Shadow Cabinet, shadowing the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and from 2001 the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Ainsworth resigned from Iain Duncan Smith's frontbench for family reasons in 2002. From 2003 he chaired the Environmental Audit Select Committee, before rejoining the Shadow Cabinet under David Cameron in December 2005 as Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Ainsworth is the only shadow cabinet member to have voted against the war in iraq.

The post has a much heightened importance given the new emphasis being given to Environmental policies by the Conservative leader David Cameron.

Speaking in March 2006 Ainsworth set out the possible new direction for Conservative policy stating that "Achieving a sustainable world and combating the threat of climate change will require some really fresh ideas and radical thinking. We cannot expect to meet the challenges of this century by toying with the structures and technologies we have inherited from the past, and the concept of Decentralised Energy should to be taken seriously."^[1]

• Peter Ainsworth official site
• Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Peter Ainsworth
• They Work For You - Peter Ainsworth MP
• The Public Whip - Peter Ainsworth MP voting record
• BBC News - Peter Ainsworth profile 10 February, 2005

• Eco-awareness day at Lingfield in July 2007
• Stepping down from the front bench in June 2002