[1] Eccles was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Chippenham in a wartime by-election in 1943, a seat he held until 1962.

Lord Eccles returned to the government in 1970 when Edward Heath appointed him Paymaster General and Minister for the Arts, a post he held until 1973.

As Minister for the Arts he clashed with the Chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain Arnold Goodman over the funding of controversial plays and exhibitions and introduced mandatory admission charges at public museums and galleries.

Widowed in 1977, he married again, this time to book collector and philanthropist Mary Morley Crapo Hyde (1912–2003) on 26 September 1984.

[5] In his later years, he lived in Montagu Square, London, and his wife's home at Four Oaks Farm, in Branchburg, New Jersey, United States; he died there on 24 February 1999, at the age of 94.