In 1997, this Ulster Unionist Party politician took office as a Member of Parliament for Northern Ireland's Lagan Valley constituency. After transferring his allegiance to the Democratic Unionist Party, he returned to the Northern Ireland Assembly and held office as Northern Ireland's Junior Minister. In 1985, after graduating from Castlereagh College, he began his first term in the Northern Ireland Assembly. Also in his early years, in response to the deaths of his cousins Sam and Alex Donaldson at the hands of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, he became a member of the Ulster Defence Regiment.