David Freud, Baron Freud
David Anthony Freud, Baron Freud (born June 1950) is a British journalist, businessman and welfare adviser and is a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. He is a great grandson of Sigmund Freud, and son of Annette Krarup and Walter Freud.
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[edit] Education
Freud attended Whitgift School, an independent school in Croydon, south London, followed by Merton College, a college of the University of Oxford.
[edit] Life and career
Freud was first employed by the Financial Times as a journalist, writing the Lex column over a period of 4 years. In 1983 he was hired by the firm then known as Rowe & Pitman. He worked on more than 50 deals, raising more than £50bn in 19 countries. Many were high profile, including the flotations of Eurotunnel and EuroDisney, while he orchestrated the rescue of the Channel Tunnel railway link and National Air Traffic Services. His role in the deals, earned him a great deal of publicity and occasionally criticism. By 2003, Freud had become the vice-chairman of investing banking at the firm, now known as UBS AG. He retired early at the age 53, claiming that he was bored with the City. He later was chief executive of the Portland Trust, which aims "to promote the peace process" in Palestine and Israel using economic measures.
In late 2006, Freud was appointed by the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to provide a nominally independent review of the British welfare to work system. His subsequent recommendations called for expanded private sector involvement in the welfare system, for substantial resources to be found to help those on Incapacity Benefit back into "economic activity" and for single parents to be required to take paid employment earlier. Although his recommendations on single parents were immediately adopted, when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister in June 2007 other restructuring measures were soft-pedalled.
He was later rehired as an adviser to the government when James Purnell was appointed Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in 2008. He was involved in producing a white paper, published in December 2008, which would require most people receiving benefits either to participate in some form of employment or prepare formally to find paid employment later.
In February 2009, Freud joined the Conservative Party, which at that time was not in government. He was given a life peerage as Baron Freud, of Eastry in the county of Kent, and became a shadow minister for welfare in the House of Lords.[1]
