Sir Malcolm Rifkind is a former British Foreign Secretary and Defence Secretary.

He was elected to Parliament in 1974 as Member for Edinburgh Pentlands, a seat he held until 1997. Between 1983 and 1986, he was Minister of State at the Foreign Office. In 1986, he was appointed by Margaret Thatcher as Secretary of State for Scotland. In 1990, he became Secretary of State for Transport under John Major, followed by his appointment as Secretary of State for Defence in 1992. From 1995 to 1997, he was Foreign Secretary. He was knighted in 1997.

In 2005, Sir Malcolm returned to Parliament as Member for Kensington and Chelsea, serving until 2015. From 2010 until 2015, he was Chairman of the United Kingdom’s Intelligence and Security Committee, which provides oversight of Britain’s intelligence agencies, MI6, MI5, and GCHQ. He also served as a member of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group, which reported to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth, Australia.

Sir Malcolm was a member of the OSCE’s Panel of Eminent Persons considering the West’s relations with Russia. He is a Board Member of the Nuclear Threat Initiative based in Washington and has been active in GlobalZero and other organisations concerned with nuclear security. In 2017, he was appointed by the British Government as Co-Chairman of the Belvedere Polish-British Forum. He is a Visiting Professor at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London.