Sir Nicholas Paul Scott (5 August 1933 – 6 January 2005) was a British Conservative Party politician. He was a liberal, pro-European Conservative who became President of the Tory Reform Group. During his time in the House of Commons he served in various ministerial roles including for social security and Northern Ireland. Early life Scott was born in Edmonton, Middlesex, to an English father, Percival John Scott, a Metropolitan Police officer, and an Irish Catholic mother, Teresa Mary Scott ( Murphy). Nicholas was raised Catholic and attended Catholic schools. In comparison to many Young Conservatives of Scott's generation who later made it into the cabinet, he stood out as not having gone to Oxbridge. His education was modest: at St Andrew's Catholic Primary in Streatham, then Clapham College, and then, part-time, at the City of London College and the City Literary Institute. He later secured jobs as a salesman, executive or director, first with Shell, then in the printing trade. Political career 1956–1970 Scott began his political career serving as a councillor on Holborn Borough Council 1956–59 and 1962–65. Scott contested Islington South West at the 1959 general election and at the 1964 election. Scott was made national chairman of the Young Conservatives in 1963. He entered the House of Commons on his third attempt, at the 1966 general election. He was returned as Member of Parliament (MP) for the Paddington South constituency, defeating Labour's Conrad Russell. Scott quickly became one of the stand out liberal Tory MPs, speaking out against discrimination of foreign students and demanding more nursery education. In 1968 when Labour home secretary James Callaghan proposed immigration limits on the entry of East African Asians with UK passports, Scott swam against the tide and refused to join the Conservative shadow government in supporting the limits. He was one of the first Conservative MPs to speak out against Enoch Powell's 1968 anti-immigration speech. 1970–1975 Scott was a protege of Iain Macleod who made him his parliamentary Private Secretary just one month before Macleod died in 1970. With the advent of the Heath government Scott stuck with his principles opposing the sale of arms to apartheid South Africa. When his seat was abolished after boundary changes for the February 1974 election, he stood in the new Paddington seat, but lost to the outgoing Paddington North MP Arthur Latham. Shortly after he lost his parliamentary seat in 1974, Time magazine