Evan Harris



Evan Leslie Harris BM BCh MP (born 21 October 1965) is a British Liberal Democrat politician. He is the Member of Parliament for Oxford West and Abingdon.

Education and professional career
Evan Harris was born in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, the son of South African Jewish parents (his father was a medical professor), and brought up in Liverpool, where attended the Blue Coat School. He went on to Wadham College, Oxford where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in physiology and a diploma in medical sociology. He completed his education at the Oxford Medical School where he received a Bachelors of Medicine and Surgery and qualified as a doctor. He also won a Harvard-Westlake School high school scholarship in 1984. He began his career at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital in 1991] as a House Officer, he left the Royal Liverpool in 1992 and took up the same position at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, becoming a senior house officer in 1992. In 1994 he became a registrar in public health with the Oxfordshire Health Authority where he remained until his election to parliament.

Political career
He joined the Social Democratic Party in 1985, joining the newly formed Liberal Democrats in 1988. He was elected to the House of Commons at the 1997 General Election for Oxford West and Abingdon following the retirement of the sitting Conservative MP and former Cabinet minister John Patten. Harris gained the seat for the Liberal Democrats with a majority of 6,285 and has remained the MP there since, making his maiden speech on May 21, 1997.

In parliament, he was made a frontbench spokesman on health by Paddy Ashdown in 1997, and was moved under the new leadership of Charles Kennedy in 1999 to become a spokesman on education. He was promoted to the Liberal Democrat shadow cabinet following the 2001 General Election as the Liberal Democrat Shadow Secretary of State for Health, but stood down to care for his girlfriend Liz O'Hara who had been diagnosed with Glioblastoma multiforme in 2003, returning to the frontbench as the spokesman on science since the 2005 General Election. He was a member of the education and employment select committee for two years from 1999 and has been a member of the science and technology committee since 2003 and a member of the human rights committee since 2005.

Harris is strongly pro-choice and has been highly criticised by pro-life and Church leaders for this and his support of euthanasia. He has spoken in support of experimentation on animals carried out at Oxford University, which is mostly based in his constituency.

Personal life
He has been a member of the British Medical Association since 1992 and has been honorary president of Delga, the Liberal Democrats' LGBT group since 2000 and a vice-president of the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA). He serves on many all party groups and is the chairman of the all party kidney group, vice chairman of the groups on refugees, malaria, AIDS, heart disease, lupus, brain tumours, and is the treasurer of the groups on Israel and Council of Christians and Jews. He is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society, and the Patron of the Oxford Secular Society. He is divorced and speaks French and Spanish. In 2000 he took part in the HIV vaccine trials.