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Responsibility for: Relations with Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Overseas Territories, the Commonwealth, UKvisas, Migration policy, Consular policy, Public Diplomacy, including the British Council, the BBC World Service and the Chevening Scholarships Scheme.
David Maxim Triesman, born on 30 October 1943, grew up in the north London Jewish community. He was educated at the Stationers' Company School, London, Essex University and King's College, Cambridge.
He joined the Labour Party in 1960 aged 16. Apart from one brief interlude, he has remained a member ever since.
After post-graduate study at Cambridge, he became a senior researcher in epidemiology at the Institute of Psychiatry, London University, developing statistical analyses of drug addiction. Subsequently he was co-ordinator of social science post-graduate research and senior lecturer at the University of the South Bank and had a visiting professorship in the United States in Econometrics.
In the following years, whether holding posts in investment and property businesses or in trade unions, he has held visiting research and teaching posts in UK universities. He is currently Visiting Fellow in Economics at the University of Cambridge and Visiting Fellow of Wolfson College (since 2000); Senior Associate Fellow of the Warwick Manufacturing Group in the School of Engineering at the University of Warwick (since 2003); and Visiting Fellow in Government at the London School of Economics and Political Science (since 2004). He has written widely on drug addiction epidemiology, economics and economic modelling, sports economics, and the administration of post-school education.
David Triesman has a wide range of experience from the trade union movement, business and academia. A lifelong trade unionist, he first became a full-time union official as deputy general secretary of National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) in 1984. He became the General Secretary of the Association of University Teachers trade union from 1993 to 2001. He has been a non-Executive Chairman of companies in investment, property and publishing. Shortly after the party's second successive general election victory, he was appointed General Secretary of the Labour Party in autumn 2001, a post he held until the end of 2003. He was created a Life Peer in January 2004 under the title Baron Triesman of Tottenham in the London Borough of Haringey, and appointed a Government Whip in the House of Lords from 2004. He held the position of Spokesman in the Lords for the Department for International Development (DfID) and has acquired both knowledge and understanding of the issues and a commitment to the development of Africa.
David is married. He is also an ardent Spurs supporter and a member of both the Tottenham Hotspurs' Supporters Club and the Middlesex County Cricket Club.