Steel, David Martin Scott (1938- )

British politician, leader of the Liberal Party 1976-88 and presiding officer (speaker) of the Scottish Parliament from 1999, born in Kirkaldy, Fife, Scotland. He entered into a compact with the Labour government 1977-78, and into an alliance with the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1983. Having supported the Liberal-SDP merger (forming the Social and Liberal Democrats, which later became the Liberal Democrats), he resigned the leadership in 1988, becoming the party's foreign affairs spokesperson. At the 1994 party conference, he announced that he would not seek re-election to the next parliament. He is the president of Liberal International. He was knighted in 1990, and entered the House of Lords in 1997 as Lord Steel of Aikwood.