He served on the Whitechapel Board of Guardians and Central Unemployment Body, and was a Member of the Home Office Departmental Committee on Lead Poisoning.

[4] When Labour came to power under Ramsay MacDonald in January 1924, Buxton was appointed Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries,[5] with a seat in the cabinet, and sworn of the Privy Council.

He resumed the post in 1929 (once again as a member of the cabinet) when Labour returned to office under MacDonald,[7] and held it until 1930, when he was raised to the peerage as Baron Noel-Buxton, of Aylsham in the County of Norfolk.

In 1912, as Buxton had been warning, war broke out between the newly independent Balkan countries of Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro and Serbia and the Ottoman Empire.

Shortly after the war had broken out, he visited Bulgaria with Mabel St Clair Stobart, founder of the Women's Sick and Wounded Convoy Corps.

After their return, they published a book describing the region and its recent history, The War and the Balkans (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1915).

A great part of the Serbo-Croat race found itself under the Austrian Empire, and with its increasing consciousness of nationality became more and more dissatisfied with its lot.

The initial grant was made to the Fight the Famine Council, led by Eglantyne Jebb and his sister-in-law, Dorothy Buxton, which later became the Save the Children Fund.