Sir James Edward Thornton Paice, DL (born 24 April 1949) is a British politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for South East Cambridgeshire from 1987 to 2015, when he declined to run for reelection and retired from politics.

A member of the Conservative Party, he served as Minister of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs from 2010 until being removed in a government reshuffle in 2012.

Paice contested the Caernarfon seat for the Conservatives in the 1979 general election but lost to incumbent Dafydd Wigley of Plaid Cymru.

At the 1987 general election he was chosen by the Conservatives to replace their incumbent member of parliament for South East Cambridgeshire, former Foreign Secretary Francis Pym, who was stepping down.

Paice was made a minor member of the government in December 1989 as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of State at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Baroness Trumpington.

[3] Nevertheless, in October 2013 he was appointed chairman of the Glasgow-based First Milk farmers’ cooperative on an annual salary of £125,000, for which it was proposed that he work one day a week.