Born in Glasgow in 1973, Alyn grew up in Scotland and Saudi Arabia, returning to Scotland in 1986. He studied Law and European Law at Leeds University and spent an Erasmus year studying at Heidelberg in Germany. He graduated from Nottingham Law School in 1996. Alyn also gained a Masters degree in European Studies from the College of Europe in Warsaw. After a year teaching English in India and working with Scotland Europa in Brussels, Alyn moved to London where he qualified as a lawyer with commercial law firm Clifford Chance.
In 2000 Alyn moved back to Scotland working first for a legal firm in Edinburgh and from 2002 for Richard Lochhead MSP then the SNP Group at Holyrood as an adviser on European, Justice and Business policies.
Elected to the European Parliament for the first time in 2004 and re-elected in the SNP victory in the 2009 election, Alyn is Scotland’s youngest MEP and is Honorary President of both the youth wings of the SNP, the Young Scots for Independence and the Federation of Student Nationalists, as well as a member of the SNP’s National Executive Committee. In Parliament, he is a full member of the Agriculture Committee and won the coveted Scottish Farmer Magazine award for “Outstanding Contribution to Scottish Agriculture” at the Highland Show in 2009. He is an alternate member of the Education and Culture Committee in addition to the Constitutional Affairs Committee. He is a full member of the Delegation for relations with the Arabian Peninsula, and also sits as alternate member on the Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Switzerland, Iceland and Norway.