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John Cradock Maples, Baron Maples (22 April 1943 – 9 June 2012) was a British politician and life peer who served as Economic Secretary to the Treasury from 1989 to 1992 and Shadow Foreign Secretary from 1999 to 2000. He is a former Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Lewisham West from 1983 to 1992 and Stratford-upon-Avon from 1997 to 2010.
In the 1960s, Maples founded the Cayman Islands law firm of Maples and Calder with James MacDonald and Douglas Calder.
At the 1992 general election he lost the Lewisham seat to Labour. He returned to the House of Commons at the following general election, in 1997; in the interim he was Chairman of Saatchi and Saatchi, the advertising and lobbying group, which had supported Thatcher.
Maples was a member of William Hague's shadow cabinet from 1997 to 2000, holding the Health, Defence and Foreign Policy briefs in succession. While Shadow Foreign Secretary, he was caught apparently calling for Britain to help Vladimir Putin in the Second Chechen War, by saying that "because there is nothing we can do about it anyway."cited in Hansard reports of Parliamentary Debates; Daily Telegraph, 13 June 2012, p.27.
In the reshuffle prompted by the return of Michael Portillo to the front bench, he lost his job to Francis Maude and left the shadow cabinet. Maples had been widely believed to be one of the main "plotters" behind the downfall of then Conservative party leader Iain Duncan Smith.
He returned to front bench politics in a minor reshuffle in November 2006, when David Cameron appointed him Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party with responsibility for candidate selection. He replaced ex-shadow cabinet minister Bernard Jenkin. Because of Cameron's high-profile attempts to have more female and minority candidates selected, which met with some opposition from local parties, the post was seen as an important one. Maples was a Cameron loyalist, and elevated to the House of Lords in July 2010. The Daily Telegraph, 13 June 2012, p.27. While an MP, Maples was president of the Conservative Friends of Israel.Anthony Lawson, Friends of Israel, 21 November 2010, at the 2:23 min mark.
In the 2009 MP's expenses scandal it emerged that Maples had claimed the Royal Automobile Club as his principal residence though according to his obituary he immediately denied any wrongdoing. On 10 January 2010, Maples announced that he would stand down from the House of Commons at the general election which was held that May.
During a Lords debate on voting reform in November 2010, Lord Maples compared Lewisham West unfavourably with his other former constituency, Stratford-upon-Avon, stating that they "could not be more different". He claimed that Lewisham West was "three square miles of concrete", did not have an "identity", and that many of its constituents "did not know which London boroughs they lived in". He added that Stratford-upon-Avon had a "very articulate" electorate and Lewisham West had "immigration and housing problems". Lord Maples was working on the Financial Services Bill from the joint Parliamentary Finance Committee.Daily Telegraph, p.27
Maples died at the Harley Street Clinic in Weymouth Street, Westminster, on 9 June 2012 from cancer, aged 69; his death was announced in the Lords by Baroness D'Souza.
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