David Charles Penhaligon (6 June 1944 – 22 December 1986) was a British politician from Cornwall who was Liberal Member of Parliament for Truro from October 1974 until his death in 1986.

[2] By 1973 he had qualified as a Chartered Mechanical Engineer; he also took over from his father a sub-post office in Chacewater from 1967 (after his marriage in 1968 to Annette Lidgey, she ran the business).

However he was not selected as Liberal candidate for Truro in the 1966 general election (nor for any other seat), and he was also rejected for Falmouth and Camborne in 1968 apparently because his strong Cornish accent was thought unattractive.

However, Penhaligon had acquired useful experience of fighting election campaigns and picked up additional tips from Wallace Lawler's practices in inner-city Birmingham.

In Parliament he swiftly won a reputation for humorous speeches, urging a national minimum wage and increased state pensions.

The pact allowed the Liberals to influence government legislation and Penhaligon objected to proposals from Tony Benn for an Electricity Industry Bill which would centralise control, which single-handedly prevented any progress.

Part of Penhaligon's support for the Lib-Lab pact was his fear that an early general election would result in a poor performance for the Liberals, and his own seat might be vulnerable.

Following the election he became an early proponent of a merger between the SDP and the Liberals under a single leader, largely to avoid disputes over allocations of Parliamentary seats.

This carried with it the job of presiding over the Liberal Assembly at the end of his term, which saw a party split over defence policy and whether to support nuclear weapons; Penhaligon did not intervene, something he regretted afterwards.

At 6.45 am on 22 December 1986, he was travelling to a post office to meet workers there when a van skidded on an icy road and hit his Rover SD1 car near Truck Fork, Probus, Cornwall.

The inquest held in March 1987 strongly suggested that Penhaligon was not wearing a seat belt at the time of the crash, nor was the driver of the van, who was thrown out of his vehicle and suffered two broken legs as a result.

Penhaligon's widow wrote his biography in 1989; his son Matthew has previously been an active member of the Liberal Democrats and was the party's candidate for the Mayoralty of Hackney in May 2006.