Osbert Peake, 1st Viscount Ingleby

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osbert_Peake,_1st_Viscount_Ingleby

Osbert Peake, 1st Viscount Ingleby, PC (30 December 1897 – 11 October 1966) was a British Conservative Party politician. He served as Minister of National Insurance and then as Minister of Pensions and National Insurance from 1951 to 1955.

Early and personal life

Peake was educated at Eton before training at Sandhurst. He served with the Coldstream Guards during World War I before joining the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry. He entered Christ Church, Oxford, in 1919 and graduated in history in 1921. In 1923 he was called to the bar at the Inner Temple.

On 19 June 1922, he married Lady Joan Capell (the younger daughter of the Earl and Countess of Essex) and they had five children. One of his daughters, Sonia, married David Hay, 12th Marquess of Tweeddale.

Political career

After unsuccessfully contesting Dewsbury in 1922, he entered Parliament as Member of Parliament (MP) for Leeds North in 1929. In April 1939, he was appointed as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department and in October 1944 he became Financial Secretary to the Treasury. Whilst in opposition, he became a leading spokesman for the Beveridge social reform proposals, and on the Conservatives return to power in 1951 he became Minister of National Insurance (Minister of Pensions and National Insurance from September 1953 and a member of the Cabinet from October 1954). In December 1955, shortly after Anthony Eden succeeded Winston Churchill as Prime Minister in April, Peake resigned from the government.

Peake became a Privy Counsellor in 1943 and was raised to the peerage on 17 January 1956 as Viscount Ingleby, of Snilesworth in the North Riding of the County of York. On his death in 1966, he was succeeded by his eldest son, Martin.