Honorific Prefix: | The Right Honourable |
The Lord Reay | |
Birth Name: | Hugh William Mackay |
Birth Date: | 19 July 1937 |
Office1: | Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry |
Primeminister1: | John Major |
Term Start1: | 22 May 1991 |
Term End1: | 14 April 1992 |
Predecessor1: | Post vacant |
Successor1: | The Baroness Denton of Wakefield |
Office3: | Lord-in-waiting Government Whip |
Primeminister3: | Margaret Thatcher |
Term Start3: | 24 July 1989 |
Term End3: | 21 May 1991 |
Predecessor3: | The Earl of Arran |
Successor3: | The Earl Howe |
Office5: | Member of the European Parliament |
Constituency5: | Appointed by Parliament |
Term Start5: | 1 January 1973 |
Term End5: | 16 July 1979 |
Office6: | Member of the House of Lords |
Status6: | Lord Temporal |
Term Label6: | as a hereditary peer |
Term Start6: | 9 August 1964 |
Term End6: | 11 November 1999 |
Predecessor6: | The 13th Lord Reay |
Successor6: | Seat abolished |
Term Label7: | as an elected hereditary peer |
Term Start7: | 11 November 1999 |
Term End7: | 10 May 2013 |
1Blankname7: | Election |
1Namedata7: | 1999 |
Predecessor7: | Seat established |
Successor7: | The 5th Baron Borwick |
Party: | Crossbencher (1963–1966); Liberal (1966–1971); Crossbencher (1971–1972); Conservative (1972–2013) |
Relatives: | See Clan Mackay |
Spouse: | Tessa Fraser (div.) Victoria Warrender |
Children: | 5 |
Alma Mater: | Eton College Christ Church, Oxford |
Hugh William Mackay, 14th Lord Reay, Baron Mackay (19 July 1937 – 10 May 2013), was a British politician and Conservative member of the House of Lords. He was the only male Lord of Parliament to sit in the House of Lords following the abolition of the automatic right of all British hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords in 1999, the only female being The Lady Saltoun.
Lord Reay was the only son of Aeneas Alexander Mackay, 13th Lord Reay. He was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford.
He succeeded to the title upon his father's death in 1963, sitting in the House of Lords first as a cross-bencher, then as a Liberal, and finally, from 1972, as a Conservative. He championed causes from the abolition of capital punishment to restrictions on onshore wind farms.[1]
He sat as an appointed Member of the European Parliament from 1973 until the first elections in 1979. He also served as a delegate to the Council of Europe, living at the family's Dutch estates in Ophemert.
He subsequently was appointed as a House of Lords whip in 1989 by Margaret Thatcher. In 1991, he was moved by her successor, John Major, to the Department of Trade and Industry as a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, but he left the government at the 1992 general election.[2]
With the passage of the House of Lords Act 1999, Lord Reay along with almost all other hereditary peers lost his automatic right to sit in the House of Lords, however, he was one of the 92 elected hereditary peers to remain in the House of Lords pending completion of House of Lords reform.
Lord Reay was the hereditary Clan Chief of Clan Mackay, and Lord of Ophemert and Zennewijnen in the Netherlands.[3]
Lord Reay was married twice. With his first wife Tessa Keswick, (née the Honourable Annabel Terese Fraser), a daughter of Lord Lovat (she then became wife of Henry Keswick), he had two sons and one daughter. With his second wife Victoria Isabella, youngest daughter of the late 1st Baron Bruntisfield, he had two daughters.
He was succeeded by his elder son, Aeneas Mackay, Master of Reay (born 20 March 1965), a banker, who married, on 14 January 2010, Mia Ruulio, elder daughter of Markus Ruulio of Helsinki. His heir is his son, the Honourable Alexander Shimi Markus Mackay (born 21 April 2010).[4]