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The only Minister to have served in Heath, Thatcher and Cameron administrations, Lord Howell of Guildford is a former Secretary of State for Energy, Minister of State for International Energy Security, Secretary of State for Transport and Minister for the Commonwealth. He was made a member of the Privy Council in 1979 and a peer in 1997.
Lord Howell served for ten years (1987-97) as chairman of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee and later for three years as first chairman of the House of Lords International Relations and Defence Committee. He was President of the Royal Commonwealth Society from 2012 to 2020 and actively engaged with the Commonwealth network’s 56 country membership on energy, trade and security issues.
He currently advises Mitsubishi Electric, the Kuwait Investment Office, Japan Central Railway Ltd and Crystol Energy – among other companies, and is a former adviser or director at UBS, Wood Mackenzie, Dow Chemical, Trafalgar House, Jardine Thompson and Merck, Sharp and Dohme.
Lord Howell is the author of several books, including The Edge of Now, 2000; Out of the Energy Labyrinth – jointly with Dr Carole Nakhle – in 2007; Energy Empires in Collision, 2016; Look Where We’re Going, 2019; The Japan Affair, 2020; and Commonwealth: The Mother of All Networks, 2020.
He is President on the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Commonwealth Affairs and the think-tank, the Centre for Commonwealth Affairs. He is also Chair of the Windsor Energy Group. In 2001, he was awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure by the Emperor of Japan for services to Japan-UK relations.