The Baron Chidgey 1942-2022

 Lord Chidgey, a Liberal Democrat life peer, died 15 February, 2022. He was 79.

David William George Chidgey, Baron Chidgey, was formerly the Liberal Democrat MP for Eastleigh, Hampshire from 1994 to 2005.

He was born 9 July, 1942, and was elected MP for Eastleigh at a by-election in 1994. Chidgey was a councillor from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s on New Alresford Town Council and Winchester City Council. He contested the Hampshire Central European Parliament constituency at by-election in 1988 and at the 1989 European Parliament election. He was Regional Chairman of the Hampshire and Wight Liberal Democrats from 1992 to 1994.

In the House of Commons, he was a member of the Chairman's panel (2001–2005), an Employment & Training spokesman, Transport spokesman, Trade & Industry spokesman and a member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee (1999–2005) and of the Joint Committee on Human Rights (2003–2005).

On 13 May 2005 it was announced that Chidgey would be created a life peer, and on 17 June 2005 the peerage was created as Baron Chidgey, of Hamble-le-Rice in the County of Hampshire. In the House of Lords, he was Liberal Democrat spokesman in defence from 2005 to 2006. He was Given the Freedom of the Borough of Eastleigh in 2005. In 2007, Chidgey was named a member of the AWEPA Governing Council.

Lord Chidgey married in 1965, April Carolyn Idris-Jones. They had a son and two daughters. 

-=-