Dick Taverne

The Right Honourable The Lord Taverne KC
Official portrait, 2018
Financial Secretary to the Treasury
In office 13 October 1969 – 19 June 1970
Prime Minister	Harold Wilson
Preceded by	Harold Lever
Succeeded by	Patrick Jenkin
Minister of State for the Treasury
In office 6 April 1968 – 13 October 1969
Prime Minister	Harold Wilson
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Bill Rodgers
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department
In office 6 April 1966 – 6 April 1968
Prime Minister	Harold Wilson
Preceded by	George Thomas
Succeeded by	Elystan Morgan
Member of the House of Lords Lord Temporal
Incumbent
Assumed office 5 February 1996 Life Peerage
Member of Parliament for Lincoln
In office 8 March 1962 – 20 September 1974
Preceded by	Geoffrey de Freitas
Succeeded by	Margaret Jackson
Personal details
Born	(1928-10-18) 18 October 1928 (age 95)
Political party	Labour (until 1972) Democratic Labour (1972–80) SDP (1981–88) Liberal Democrats (since 1988)
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford

Dick Taverne, Baron Taverne, KC (born 18 October 1928) is a British politician and life peer who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Lincoln from 1962 to 1974.^[1] A member of the Liberal Democrats, he was a Labour MP until his deselection in 1972,^[2] following which he resigned his seat and won the subsequent by-election in 1973 as a Democratic Labour candidate.^[3]

Taverne's 1973 victory in Lincoln was short-lived; despite retaining his seat at the February 1974 general election, Labour regained the seat at the October 1974 general election, by the future cabinet minister Margaret Beckett. However, his success opened the possibility of a realignment on the left of British politics, which took shape in 1981 as the Social Democratic Party (SDP), which Taverne joined. He later joined the Liberal Democrats when the SDP merged with the Liberal Party. He has sat as a Liberal Democrat life peer since 1996.