David Ivor Young, Baron Young of Graffham, (27 February 1932 – 9 December 2022) was a British Conservative politician, cabinet minister and businessman. Early life David Young was born into an orthodox Jewish family in London. His father was born in Yurevich, near Minsk, a village that is now in Belarus but was then largely populated by Lithuanian Jews, including Young's own family. The family fled an antisemitic pogrom to England when David's father was 5. In England, Young's father imported flour and later set up as a manufacturer of coats for children. Young went to Christ's College in Finchley and then University College London, to take a law degree as an evening student during his time as an articled clerk to become a solicitor, being admitted to the roll of solicitors in 1955. Business career Having qualified as a solicitor, Young practised for only a year, after which he joined Great Universal Stores as an executive, working for part of that time as an assistant to the chairman, Sir Isaac Wolfson. In 1961 he left GUS and set up his first business, Eldonwall Ltd. with funding from the Gestetner Family Settlements. During the sixties he built up a group of companies in industrial property, construction and plant hire, selling out in June 1970 to Town & City Properties PLC (T&CP), where he joined the board. After the property crash of 1973–1974, Young assisted Jeffrey Sterling to reverse his company into T&CP to form a group that later became P&O. In 1975, Young he left the board and entered into a joint venture with Manufacturers Hanover, and became chairman of Manufacturers Hanover Property Services, lending on real estate in the United Kingdom and overseas. He also had a number of other commercial interests. He sold out all his commercial interests in 1980 upon entering the Department of Industry. His younger brother, Stuart, served as chairman of the BBC. Margaret Thatcher Young became involved in voluntary organisations as Chairman of the vocational training charity British ORT; he was made a Director of the CPS in 1979 shortly after the general election that brought Margaret Thatcher to power. On the first day of the new government, Keith Joseph, the Secretary of State for Industry, appointed him his advisor responsible for what later became known as privatisation. Because of his involvement with vocational training through ORT, he was picked by Norman Tebbit when