Donald Curry, Baron Curry of Kirkharle
Businessperson and Member of the House of Lords (born 1944)
Donald Thomas Younger Curry, Baron Curry of Kirkharle, (born 4 April 1944) is a British farmer and businessman who is the former chair of NFU Mutual (2003–2011) and non-executive chair of the Better Regulation Executive, and a former member of the House of Lords.
Curry was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1997 New Year Honours, and was knighted in the 2001 Birthday Honours.
In 2001–2 he chaired the Policy Commission on the Future of Farming and Food, known as the Curry Commission, which produced a report for the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
On the recommendation of the House of Lords Appointments Commission, he was created a crossbench (independent) life peer on 13 October 2011, taking the title Baron Curry of Kirkharle, of Kirkharle in the County of Northumberland. He was introduced in the House of Lords on 24 October 2011. In the introduction ceremony, his supporters were the Lord Plumb and the Baroness Byford.
Lord Curry is a member of the all-party parliamentary group Christians in Parliament.
During the House of Lords debate on the Assisted Dying Bill in September 2025, he argued that there is "absolutely no question that this Bill, if passed, would devalue the importance of human life, and economics would become part of the decision-making process."
Personal life
Since September 1976, he has been married to Lady Rhoda. They had three children, a daughter, Jane, and two sons, Jonathan and Craig. Jane, who was born with a severe learning disability, died aged 42 in 2014.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Donald Curry, Baron Curry of Kirkharle” as businessperson and Member of the House of Lords (born 1944). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1239784. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1944, 2003, 2011 and 1997.
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This entry incorporates text from “Donald Curry, Baron Curry of Kirkharle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.