Lord Freud

David Anthony Freud, Baron Freud, PC (born 24 June 1950) is a British politician. He is a former Minister of State for Welfare Reform in the Conservative Government of the United Kingdom. Before he joined the Conservative Party, he advised New Labour on welfare reform during its final term of office. He is a past vice-chairman of investment banking at UBS. He stepped down from his government role at the end of December 2016.

Freud is the son of Walter Freud and a great-grandson of the doctor and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. He was educated at Whitgift School, Croydon, and Merton College, Oxford, where he took a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics.

After starting out at the Western Mail, Freud worked at the Financial Times for eight years as a journalist.

In 1983 he was hired by the stockbroking firm then known as Rowe & Pitman. Later, he worked for S G Warburg, which was taken over by UBS. He was vice-chairman of investment banking at UBS before he retired.

His book Freud in the City describes his life as a merchant banker.

In 2006, Freud was asked by Tony Blair to review the UK's welfare-to-work system. The Daily Telegraph said that Blair had been "impressed by his role in raising finance for Eurotunnel and EuroDisney" while at UBS.

Freud's 2007 report - dubbed 'the Freud report' but officially titled Reducing dependency, increasing opportunity: options for the future of welfare to work - called for the greater use of private sector companies who would be paid by results, for substantial resources to be made available to help lone parents and people on Incapacity Benefit back into work, and for a single working-age benefit payment to replace Housing Benefit, Jobseekers Allowance, etc. His central thesis was that spending on 'delivery' - such as schemes to get people back to work - would save money in the long run because there would be fewer people being paid money in the form of benefits. Freud wrote:

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