Steve Baker: Society is Co-Operation — The Need for an Economic Paradigm Shift

Steve Baker MP FRSA is Minister of State for Northern Ireland and Conservative MP for Wycombe. He is a former Royal Air Force engineer, consultant and bank worker, who was chair of the European Research Group and deputy chair of the COVID Recovery Group. He is a proponent of the Austrian School of Economics.

Mr Baker’s career began in the Royal Air Force as an engineer officer working with Tornado, Jaguar and the Adour aero engine. He became a Chartered Engineer through the Royal Aeronautical Society and held a military airworthiness licence. After his time with the RAF, he read for an MSc in Computer Science at Oxford University (St Cross College) and joined a specialist, entrepreneurial software firm as Head of Consulting and Product Manager before taking on various senior roles in business software.

Mr Baker was elected to Parliament representing Wycombe in 2010. He served first on the Transport Select Committee before moving to the Treasury Committee. He was elected to the Executive of the Conservative 1922 Committee by Parliamentary colleagues.

Working in partnership with Toby Baxendale, Dr Tim Evans and Dr Anthony Evans, Mr Baker founded The Cobden Centre, an educational charity for social progress through honest money, free trade and peace. In 2014, he secured an historic House of Commons debate on ‘Money Creation and Society’, the first time in 170 years, since the Bank Charter Act in 1844, that the topic had been fully debated. He is the co-author of the monograph ‘Are We In The Largest Bubble In History? An Austrian School Analysis’.

He was chair of the European Research Group (a parliamentary group of eurosceptic Conservative MPs) from 2016 to 2017 and 2019 to 2020, and deputy chair of the COVID Recovery Group (a parliamentary group formed in November 2020 to oppose further national lockdowns).