Sir Antony Brian Baldry, TD, DL (born 10 July 1950) is a British Conservative Party politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Banbury from 1983 to 2015.
From 1985 to 1990, Baldry was a Parliamentary Private Secretary, successively to Lynda Chalker and John Wakeham, who was leader of the House of Commons.
In January 1990 Margaret Thatcher made Baldry a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department of Energy, where he helped John Wakeham privatise the electricity industry.
[12] Following the 2010 general election, he became co-chair of the APPG on Agriculture and Food for Development along with Lord Cameron of Dillington, and joined the Ecclesiastical Select Committee.
[15] He stepped down on 11 July 2019 and was replaced by the vice chair Jennie Page[16] Tony Baldry is a member of the Council of the Overseas Development Institute, was vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Overseas Development (Apgood),[17] a Trustee of Friends of Africa, which is a UK-based charity, and a Trustee of Afghan Action, a UK-based charity working in Afghanistan.
In January 1997, Baldry accepted from Sarosh Zaiwalla (a prominent London solicitor), a £5,000 personal loan, on which he paid interest.
[20] It was later held by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards that in that reference or separately, Baldry should have declared that he was at the time a beneficiary of a loan from Sarosh Zaiwalla.
[21] In January 2005 Baldry wrote to Hilary Benn, Secretary for International Development, on behalf of Milestone Trading, a British company involved in diamond mining in Sierra Leone.
In his letter to Benn, which was written on House of Commons notepaper, he did not reveal that Milestone had paid $75,000 into a company in which he was a one-third shareholder.
[22] In investigating this case, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards concluded that Baldry should not have used House of Commons notepaper in the letter to Benn.
"[25] In September 2009 Baldry, in his capacity as a barrister instructed by the solicitor Sarosh Zaiwalla, wrote a letter to Foreign Secretary David Miliband on behalf of Nigerian state governor James Ibori, who was under investigation by Scotland Yard for corruption.
[26] The Oxford Mail reported that Mr Baldry had been "paid more than £37,000 for 29 hours' work between September and December by Sarosh Zaiwalla, a London-based solicitor who had acted for the Ibori family".
[27] Later that same month, The Independent printed a correction and an apology over a report in which they had suggested that Tony Baldry had "lobbied" on behalf of James Ibori.
[28] It was reported in issue 1320 of the Private Eye that Baldry's own libel solicitor had described the letter's purpose as pointing out that once the case was resolved "relevant agencies might want to reflect on lessons learned".
[42] In September 2012 it was reported that Baldry crashed his car into four stationary vehicles, a bollard, and a portable toilet while attempting to park.