Sir Malcolm Leslie Rifkind KCMG KC (born 21 June 1946) is a British politician who served in the cabinets of Margaret Thatcher and John Major from 1986 to 1997, and most recently as chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament from 2010 to 2015.

[3] He was educated at George Watson's College and the University of Edinburgh where he studied law before taking a postgraduate degree in political science (his thesis was on land apportionment in Southern Rhodesia).

Rifkind was one of only five Ministers (Tony Newton, Kenneth Clarke, Patrick Mayhew and Lynda Chalker are the others) to serve throughout the whole 18 years of the Governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major.

Rifkind opposed closure by the Government arguing that the whole steel industry should be privatised and that the future of individual plants would be determined by the companies that owned them in the private sector.

He also agreed with the decision proposed by his predecessor, George Younger, that the new tax should be introduced a year earlier in Scotland than in England because of the political necessity to end the domestic rates.

Throughout his term as Scottish Secretary, Rifkind, like Younger before him, and Ian Lang and Michael Forsyth in later years, was constrained by the political weakness of the Conservative Party in Scotland unlike in England.

During the tense period that followed the first round of voting Rifkind was one of those who advised Thatcher that it would be best for her to stand down, and did not promise to support her if she stood for election.

One of his early decisions was to reverse the proposed disbandment of the Cheshire and Staffordshire Regiment and the Royal Scots and King's Own Scottish Borderers.

With some of the additional savings that had been found Rifkind was able to secure the agreement of the United States to British purchase of cruise missiles.

Like John Major and the Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, Rifkind was opposed to military intervention by Britain and the international community as combatants in that conflict.

Rifkind was a strong and vocal opponent of the American proposal for "lift and strike" which would have ended the UN Arms Embargo and subjected the Bosnian Serbs to NATO bombing from the air.

One of his first duties was to chair the London Summit on Bosnia which put much greater pressure on the Bosnian Serbs in the aftermath of the Srebrenica massacre and led, in due course, to the Dayton Accord which ended the fighting.

In the Middle East, Rifkind committed the British Government, for the first time, to a Palestinian State on the West Bank and in Gaza.

Rifkind also, as Foreign Secretary, called for the creation of a North Atlantic Free Trade Area that would have created a free-trade relationship between the European Union and the United States and Canada.

At the 1997 general election, he lost his Pentlands seat in common with all Conservatives in Scotland (and Wales), and was succeeded by Labour candidate Lynda Clark.

During this time, he remained politically active, as president of the Scottish Conservatives, and used his position outside Westminster to criticise the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the Blair Government's support of it.

On 8 June 2005, a month after the Conservative defeat at the 2005 general election, Rifkind stated that it was "quite likely" that he would stand for the leadership after Michael Howard's resignation.

[8] Rifkind subsequently confirmed this on 14 August, although admitting that he had a "mountain to climb",[9] and receiving sparse support amongst Conservative MPs, with several exceptions, such as Crispin Blunt.

[9] Consequently, on 11 October 2005 he announced that he was withdrawing from the leadership contest and that he would be supporting Kenneth Clarke's candidacy, acknowledging that "There is no realistic prospect of me coming through".

In December 2008, he became a leading spokesman of the Global Zero movement, which includes over 300 eminent leaders and over 400,000 citizens from around the world working toward the elimination of all nuclear weapons by multilateral negotiation.

[13] Rifkind was appointed Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee by the Prime Minister, David Cameron, on 6 July 2010, a post he held until 24 February 2015.

The legislation also gave the ISC, for the first time, explicit authority to provide oversight over the operations of the intelligence agencies rather than just their policy, resources and organisation.

[14] On 28 August 2013, Rifkind appeared to modify his anti-war principles by advocating British military intervention in the Syrian civil war, subject to certain important caveats.

[15] On 18 March 2014, during an interview with CBC Radio News, Rifkind spoke out against the Russian annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, stating that this risked destabilising the entire area and European politics in general.

In his opinion, Ukrainian forces had demonstrated "remarkable restraint" against Russian "humiliation", and had turned their military disadvantage into a substantial "moral advantage".

Because of his criticism of Russian action in Crimea and eastern Ukraine Rifkind was included in a list of senior European politicians and former Ministers banned from visiting Russia.

We find this unacceptable: however unintentionally, they are providing a safe haven for terrorists.The obligatory internet rights group warned against co-opting companies and turning them into an arm of the surveillance state, and David Cameron vowed to take action.

[21] Media regulator Ofcom however took a different view, judging in December 2015 that the journalists had investigated a matter of significant public interest and that their presentation had been fair.

[citation needed] In December 2020, the University of London appointed Rifkind as Chairman of an Inquiry into the future of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies.

[30] In February 2022 Rifkind was invited to preach the Perse Sermon at Evensong in the chapel of Gonville&Caius College, Cambridge University