Dr Evan Harris has been Member of Parliament for Oxford West and Abingdon since 1997.

Born in Sheffield in 1965, he is the second son of South African immigrants disillusioned with the apartheid regime. He was educated at Blue Coat Secondary School, Liverpool. After a year at Harvard High School in North Hollywood, he went to Wadham College, Oxford in 1985 to study physiological sciences (BA), and then medicine at Oxford University Clinical School from where he qualified as a doctor in 1991.

He trained in emergency hospital medicine in Liverpool and at the Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford. In 1994 he took up an honorary public health registrar post with the Regional Health Authority, as the medical officer to the Task Force on Junior Doctors’ Hours, charged with implementing the ‘New Deal’ to reduce the long and unsafe hours worked by junior doctors.

An active trade unionist, Evan was local BMA representative and negotiator from 1992 to 1994, and was then elected to represent doctors in the region on the National Council of the BMA.

He was selected to fight Oxford West and Abingdon for the Liberal Democrats in 1994. Following his election in 1997, he was a junior health spokesman, then spokesman on Higher Education, Science and Women’s Issues.