Anthony Browne was born in Mill Road Maternity Hospital in Cambridge, grew up on a small farm in Fowlmere, in the south of the constituency, and went to the village primary school. He got a bursary to go to the Perse School and went to Hills Road Sixth Form College, before studying Mathematics at Cambridge University, where he got a scholarship. His parents live in Foxton, which is where he got married.
Despite being scientifically trained, Anthony became a national journalist, working as business reporter and economics correspondent at the BBC, reporting on national television and radio news, including the Today programme. He was economics correspondent, health editor and environment editor of the Observer, and then environment editor, Europe correspondent and chief political correspondent at the Times. He covered the Iraq war for the Times, where he was shot at by American troops.
Anthony was then asked to run Policy Exchange think tank, where he developed policies for David Cameron ahead of the 2010 general election. When Boris Johnson was elected Mayor of London in 2008, he asked Anthony to join his team. Anthony worked for Boris in his first term as Mayor, in charge of economic and business policy in London, and then wrote his 2012 election manifesto.
Anthony became CEO of the British Bankers’ Association, leading the banking industry through the reforms in the wake of the financial crisis. He resolved the LIBOR crisis, negotiated a deadline to the PPI miss-selling scandal, and set up the banking industry’s first Consumer Panel to encourage it to focus on the needs of customers. After the 2016 referendum, he lead Brexit negotiations for the banks with the Government and the EU before leaving the Association in June 2017 when the BBA merged with five other trade associations to form UK Finance.
Anthony is the co-founder of the HomeOwners Alliance, Britain’s only consumer group to help homeowners with problems, and to lead on reforms of the housing industry. The Alliance has been very successful in pushing reforms of stamp duty and the leasehold system. He has also been a member of the board of a range of financial technology companies.
Anthony was elected as MP for South Cambridgeshire at the general election on 12 December 2019. In January 2020 he was elected as the Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for the Environment. In February 2020 he was elected as a member of the Treasury Select Committee.
