Sir John William Frederic Nott (born 1 February 1932) is a former British Conservative Party politician. He was a senior politician of the late 1970s and early 1980s, playing a prominent role as Secretary of State for Defence during the 1982 invasion of the Falkland Islands and subsequent Falklands War. Early life Born in Bideford, Devon, the son of Richard Nott and Phyllis (née Francis), Nott was educated at Bradfield College and was commissioned as a regular officer in the 2nd Gurkha Rifles (1952–1956). He served in the Malayan Emergency after a period of service with the Royal Scots. He left to study law and economics at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was President of the Cambridge Union Society. He was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1959. Member of Parliament Nott served as Member of Parliament (MP) for the Cornwall constituency of St Ives from 1966 to 1983. He was the last person to commence his parliamentary career under the nearly obsolete National Liberal label. The National Liberals were formally absorbed by the Conservatives in 1968, after which Nott sat as a Conservative MP. , he is the last surviving former National Liberal MP. In 1968, he was one of the few MPs to vote against the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968, thinking it "disgraceful that people who had British passports should have them taken away". In government Nott served in the early-1970s Heath government as Minister of State at the Treasury. He joined the Shadow Cabinet in 1976 and the Cabinet when Margaret Thatcher won the 1979 general election. With this appointment to the cabinet, he was made a Privy Councillor. He served first as Secretary of State for Trade, which incorporated the Department of Prices and Consumer Protection. Nott was responsible for repealing the prices and incomes policy and played a leading role in the abolition of Exchange Control. The Department of Trade also covered responsibility for Shipping and Aviation and the privatisation of British Airways, the first privatisation of the Thatcher Government. He was moved to Defence in the reshuffle of January 1981. He was widely criticised by Royal Navy chiefs over the 1981 Defence White Paper for his decision to cut back on forward government naval expenditure during the severe economic recession of the early 1980s; the reductions originally included the proposed scrapping of the Antarctic patrol ship and the reduction of the