Morris was educated at Harrow County School for Boys, studied PPE at St Edmund Hall, Oxford and then took a D.Phil.
in Economics at Nuffield College, Oxford before taking up a Research Fellowship at the Centre for Business and Industrial Studies at University of Warwick.
In addition, he has acted as adviser to the Asian Development Bank on enterprise reform in Central Asia.
[3] From 2007 to 2013 he was a member of the Committee for Standards in Public Life (formerly the Nolan committee); from 2006 to 2016 the chairman of the Trustees of the Oxford University Pension Fund; and is now chairman of The Cheviot Trust (a not-for-profit, multi-employer pension scheme); from 2006 to 2013 a non-executive director of Lucida plc (an insurance company which specialises in buying out large scale pension funds) and then its chairman.
While at Oriel he was chairman of Oxford University's College Contributions Committee (which recommends redistribution of resources from colleges with high endowment to those with low endowment); and chairman of the Advisory Board for the Centre for Business Taxation at Oxford University.