Martin Horwood MP

Liberal Democrat Shadow Environment Minister

Martin Horwood was born in Cheltenham in 1962.

He went to Oxford University to read Modern History in 1981, and was elected President of the Oxford Student Liberal Society and then Chair of the party's national student wing, the Union of Liberal Students.

After graduating and leaving student politics, Martin worked first in a London advertising agency and then in the voluntary sector. In 1990 he moved to Oxford to work for Oxfam and was elected as a local district and parish councillor there. During his stay at Oxfam, Martin's teams raised tens of millions of pounds for the poor in developing countries, including £2.5m for victims of the Rwanda genocide.

In 1995 he married Dr Shona Arora who was then training in public health medicine. Martin and Shona have a daughter Maya and son Sam.

They moved to India for a year, Martin working for Oxfam and Shona for the UN programme on AIDS and a small charity working on sexual health in the slums of Delhi.

They returned to the UK, Martin becoming the first Director of Fundraising at the Alzheimer's Society, the leading care and research charity for people with dementia and their carers. Martin led the team that won the charity Tesco Charity of the Year, earning £16,000 for the Cheltenham branch of the Society alone.

Martin returned home to Cheltenham in 2001 to work for local business Target Direct which works mainly with charity clients, including the British Heart Foundation, Marie Curie Cancer Care and Cheltenham's own National Star College. He became their Head of Consultancy. Shona was appointed Director of Public Health for Cheltenham and Tewkesbury.

Martin was elected as Cheltenham's MP in May 2005. He serves on the Environmental Audit select committee and is the Liberal Democrat shadow minister for the environment. He is also secretary of the all-party parliamentary group on corporate responsibility and chair of the all-party group for tribal peoples.