Sir Richard Ottaway

Mr. Ottaway is a former member of Parliament for Croydon South, UK. Ottaway is past Chairman and member of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Population, Development and Reproductive Health and has been active with this group since 1983. As Chair, in 2007, he oversaw the Group’s publication of Return of the Population Growth Factor: Its impact on the Millennium Development Goals. In 1986, Mr. Ottaway became a founding member of Population Concern after its separation from the Family Planning Association. In 1991, he published Less People, Less Pollution. He and researcher Genevieve Hutchison coauthored Sex, Ideology and Religion: 10 Myths about Population Growth in 2011. He was first elected to Parliament as the Member for Nottingham North from 1983-87, returning to Parliament in 1992 as the Member for Croydon South, and he was re-elected in 1997, 2001, and 2005. From 2005 to 2010, he was a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee and Vice Chairman of the 1922 Committee. In 2010, he became the first elected Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. As Chair in 2014, he led the production of the report The UK’s Response to Extremism and Instability in North and West Africa, which stressed the links between rapid population growth and political instability. In 2014, he was also awarded Population Matters’ Population and Sustainability Awareness Award for the person, program, or institution doing most to promote public debate on population growth.