Alok Kumar Sharma, Baron Sharma (born 7 September 1967), is a British politician. A member of the Conservative Party, he served as President for COP26 from 2021 to 2022, having previously served as Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy from 2020 to 2021 and Secretary of State for International Development from 2019 to 2020. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Reading West from 2010 to 2024 and has been a member of the House of Lords since 2024.
Sharma served in Theresa May's government as Minister of State for Housing from 2017 to 2018 and as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment from 2018 to 2019. Sharma was the president for the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) and negotiated the Glasgow Climate Pact.
Sharma was born in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India, and moved to Reading with his parents when he was five years old. He is a Hindu. His father, Prem, was involved in Conservative politics in Reading, and became chairman of the Berkshire area of Conservatives before helping to establish the Conservative Friends of India.
Sharma was brought up in Earley and Whitley Wood and was educated at both Presentation College and Reading Blue Coat School in Sonning, before studying at the University of Salford, from where he graduated with a BSc in Applied Physics with Electronics in 1988.
He subsequently qualified as a chartered accountant, training with Deloitte Haskins & Sells in Manchester before moving into corporate finance advisory with Nikko Securities and then Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken, where he held senior roles based in London, Stockholm and Frankfurt. Sharma was an adviser to clients in the corporate and private-equity sector on cross-border mergers and acquisitions, listings and restructurings.
Sharma is a governor of a local primary school in Reading. Previously he served as a chairman of the political think-tank the Bow Group's Economic Affairs Committee.
Sharma was selected as the Conservative Party candidate for the Reading West constituency in 2006. He was elected as the MP for Reading West in the 2010 general election, winning a majority of 6,004 after the retirement of the Labour MP Martin Salter.
In the 2015 general election he was re-elected with an increased majority of 6,650.
In the 2017 general election, he won his seat with a reduced majority of 2,876. On being re-elected, Sharma wrote on his website: "Having grown up locally in Reading and being very much a local Reading man, I am delighted to have been re-elected for a constituency in my home town".
In the 2019 general election Sharma increased his majority to 4,117.
On 26 September 2023, Sharma announced his intention to stand down at the 2024 general election.
Early parliamentary career (2010–2016)
Sharma served as a member of the Science and Technology Select Committee between July 2010 and February 2011 and the Treasury Select Committee between September 2014 and March 2015.
Sharma was Conservative Party Vice-Chairman for Candidates from 2012 to 2015 and co-chairman of Conservative Friends of India in 2014.
In September 2011, Sharma was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Mark Hoban, the then Financial Secretary to the Treasury. During his time as a PPS, Sharma sat on a number of public bill committees including two finance bills, the 2013 Banking Reform Bill and the 2011 Pensions Bill. He also served as PPS to Sir Oliver Letwin, the former Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who had overall responsibility for the Cabinet Office.
Following the death of two cyclists in Purley on Thames, Sharma campaigned in 2014 for longer prison sentences for those convicted of death by dangerous driving. Sharma initiated a Parliamentary debate on the issue and backed a petition, started by the families of victims, which gained more than 55,000 signatures.
Sharma campaigned to reduce the number of first-class carriages on trains operating on the Great Western route between Reading and London. In January 2015, he held a meeting with Rail Minister Claire Perry and First Great Western managing director Mark Hopwood to discuss proposals to increase Standard Class capacity to reduce overcrowding.
In 2016, Sharma was appointed as the Prime Minister's "Infrastructure Envoy to India" and was a key member of the UK team responsible for ensuring that the first ever "masala" or rupee-denominated bond, issued outside of India by an Indian company, was listed on the London Stock Exchange, strengthening further London's position as a pre-eminent world financial centre.