David Anthony Llewellyn Owen was born in Plymouth on 2 July 1938. He was educated at Radfield College and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and trained as a doctor at St Thomas’s Hospital, London. He married Deborah Schabert in 1968.
During his clinical training in London he joined the Labour Party and the Fabian Society. He lost his first campaign in Torrington, 1964, but was elected two years later in Plymouth Sutton. He held several positions in the Ministry of Defence and was Labour’s Junior Defence Spokesman in opposition before resigning in 1972 in protest at Labour’s opposition to the EEC. He returned to government in 1974 as Minister of State for Health after narrowly winning the Plymouth Devonport seat. In the Callaghan government, Owen was made Minister of State at the Foreign Office, and after the death of Anthony Crosland, he became one of the youngest British Foreign Secretaries, holding the post from 1977 to 1979.
Owen kept his seat despite Labour’s 1979 election defeat. However, unhappy with Labour’s turn to the left, in 1981 he left the party along with Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins and Bill Rodgers to form the Social Democratic Party (SDP). He led the SDP from 1983-87. When the party merged with the Liberals in 1987 Owen remained with the SDP until the party was dissolved in 1990. He was made a life peer in 1992, and sits in the House of Lords as a crossbencher.