John Charles Baron (born 21 June 1959) is a British Conservative politician and the Member of Parliament for Basildon and Billericay.

Baron was born in Redhill, Surrey and educated at Queen's College, Taunton, Jesus College, Cambridge and at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He joined the British Army in 1984 and was a captain serving with The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers in Northern Ireland, Cyprus and Germany. He left the Army in 1987 and became a merchant banker, working as a fund manager then director of Henderson Private Investors Ltd (now Henderson Global Investors) and Rothschild Asset Management.

In 1995 John Baron became the treasurer of the Streatham Conservative Association. In 1997 David Amess decided not to risk standing again in his ultra marginal Conservative seat of Basildon and was successfully selected and subsequently elected for the safer seat of Southend West. Baron won the Conservative nomination to defend Basildon at the 1997 General Election, but Amess's judgement proved accurate and Angela Smith won the seat for Labour comfortably.

Stephen James Dorrell (born 25 March 1952) is a British politician. A member of the Conservative Party, he served in the Cabinet of Prime Minister John Major as Secretary of State for National Heritage (1994–95) and Secretary of State for Health (1995–97). He is the Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency of Charnwood in northern Leicestershire, and is a Patron of the Tory Reform Group.

Dorrell was born in Worcester. He was educated at Uppingham School, an independent school for boys in the small market town of Uppingham in Rutland in central England, followed by Brasenose College, Oxford, where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree. Dorrell was a member of the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve for two years from 1971.

During the February 1974 general election, Dorrell acted as a personal assistant to Conservative minister Peter Walker. He contested the safe Labour seat of Hull East at the October 1974 general election, when aged only 22, but was soundly defeated by the sitting MP and later Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, who was returned with a majority of 25,793 votes.