Alistair James Hendrie Burt (born 25 May 1955) is a Conservative British politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for North East Bedfordshire from 2001 until 2019.

Whilst a student at Oxford, Burt attended the televised 1975 A Question of Europe debate wearing the stereotyped French dress of a beret, striped shirt, and string of onions.

[1] He was one of many ministers who lost their seats at the 1997 general election when Bury North fell to Labour's David Chaytor by 7,866 votes.

[1] However, in January 2008, Burt was promoted to Assistant Chief Whip and Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party with responsibility for Internal Development.

In December 2008, he led an all-Party group meeting with the Red Cross to campaign for visiting rights for the Israeli hostage Gilad Shalit.

[9] He is also joint founder and first Chairman of The Enterprise Forum, an organisation set up in 1997 to facilitate discussions on policy between the Business Community and the Conservative Party.

[20] Following the Conservative victory in the 2015 general election on 11 May, Burt returned to Government as Minister of State for Community and Social Care in the Department of Health.

As a Conservative health minister, he blocked a new law to provide cheap and effective drugs for the NHS by championing medicines whose patents have expired.

Burt spoke in Parliament for nearly half an hour to filibuster the proposed Off-Patent Drugs Bill, a plan that had cross-party support from backbenchers.

[25] In November 2016, following his departure from a ministerial post he made a passionate speech to Parliament in order to layout events stating: "In June 2015, I was re-invited by the then Prime Minister to join the Government in the Department of Health, at which point I went quiet on campaigning as far as the public were concerned.

[citation needed] In Theresa May's reshuffle following the 2017 election, Burt accepted his old post back at the Foreign Office.

[27] He said that the United Kingdom "remains committed to supporting Saudi Arabia to address its legitimate security needs.

[3] He was readmitted to the Conservative Party alongside nine other MPs on 29 October, before the general election took place,[34] which he chose not to contest.