Benjamin Whitaker (politician)

Benjamin Charles George Whitaker CBE (15 September 1934 – 8 June 2014) was a British barrister and Labour Party politician.

He was the third son of Major-General Sir John Albert Charles Whitaker, 2nd Baronet of Babworth Hall, Retford, Nottinghamshire. He was educated at Eton before undergoing a period of National Service as an officer in the Coldstream Guards from 1952-54. He subsequently entered New College, Oxford where he obtained a BA in Modern History before being called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1959.

In 1964 he married Janet Alison Stewart, who was created a life peer in 1999 as Baroness Whitaker, of Beeston in the County of Nottinghamshire. The couple settled in Swiss Cottage in the Metropolitan Borough of Hampstead, London, and had three children.

He practised as a barrister from 1959, and as an extramural lecturer in law for the University of London from 1963.

He was elected at the 1966 general election as Member of Parliament (MP) for the normally Conservative seat of Hampstead. Shortly after his election to the House of Commons he was appointed parliamentary private secretary (PPS) to Anthony Greenwood, Minister of Overseas Development. Later in the year Greenwood was appointed to the post of Minister of Housing and Local Government, and Whitaker continued to serve as PPS in the new department. In 1969 Whitaker was advanced to the rank of parliamentary secretary, or junior minister, in the Department of Overseas Development.

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