Des Browne, Lord Browne of Ladyton, is a British Labour politician. From 1997 until 2010, after a legal career, he was MP for Kilmarnock & Loudoun. Consecutively he held ministerial posts in the Northern Ireland office, the DWP, the Home Office, the Treasury, the MOD and the Scotland Office.
He served in Cabinet positions as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Secretary of State for Defence and Secretary of State for Scotland. A member of the House of Lords since 2010, he is also Vice-chair of the Washington DC based Nuclear Threat Initiative, an NGO that works to reduce the threats posed by nuclear and other WMD. Lord Browne is the Chair of the Executive Board of the European Leadership Network and a Board member of the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network.
He is a Fellow Commoner of St Catharine’s College and a Visiting Researcher at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, both at the University of Cambridge, where he works on a number of projects that engage the challenges science and technology pose for public policy. He is currently a member of the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Select Committee and the House of Lords Fraud Act 2006 and Digital Fraud Select Committee.
