Simon Robert Key (22 April 1945 – 3 February 2023) was a British Conservative politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Salisbury from 1983 to 2010.

At the age of 10, he was part of a school walk on Swanage Beach in Dorset where he and six friends discovered an old wartime mine which detonated; only Key and one other boy survived.

He was the Member of Parliament for Salisbury between 1983 and 2010 and was Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities in the Department of the Environment (now DEFRA) from 1990 to 1992, setting up the Inner Cities Religious Council[4] in 1991, and was Minister for Sport at the Department of National Heritage (now Culture, Media and Sport) from 1992 to 1993.

[5] In opposition, Key served as a front-bench spokesman during the leaderships of William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith.

He stood down from this position in June 2003, returning to the backbenches but retaining his membership of the Defence Select Committee.