The oldest Conservative Member of Parliament to stand down at the 2017 general election,[4] being succeeded as MP for Saffron Walden by Kemi Badenoch, he was created a Life Peer on 22 June 2018,[5] taking his seat in the House of Lords as Baron Haselhurst.

Before his election to parliament, Haselhurst worked in management in the chemicals industry and became an unremunerated director when his father's pharmacy was incorporated.

Selected to contest the resulting by-election on 7 July, Haselhurst retained the seat for the Conservatives with an increased majority of 12,437, and was returned to Parliament as its MP at every subsequent election until his retirement in 2017.

Following the Conservatives' return to power at the 1979 general election, Haselhurst was appointed as PPS to the Secretary of State for Education and Science Mark Carlisle serving for two years from 1979.

He succeeded the Malaysian Datuk Seri Haji Shafie Apdal; the previous British parliamentarian elected to this post had been Sir Colin Shepherd in 1996.

[20] A staunch opponent of Brexit at the 2016 referendum,[21] in April 2017, Haselhurst announced that he would not be contesting the 2017 general election, having initially indicated his intention to stand.

Nominated for elevation to the peerage on 18 May 2018,[23] he was created by Letters Patent on 22 June, Baron Haselhurst, of Saffron Walden in the County of Essex,[24] before being introduced to the Upper House to sit on the Conservative benches.