Crawford was elected Member of Parliament for Chorley in 1895 and served as a Junior Lord of the Treasury from 1903 to 1905 under Arthur Balfour. After the Conservatives went into opposition in 1905 he was Chief Conservative Whip in the House of Commons between 1911 and 1913. The latter year he succeeded his father in the earldom and took his seat in the House of Lords (in virtue of his junior title of Baron Wigan, which was in the Peerage of the United Kingdom). In July 1916 Crawford was admitted to the Privy Council and appointed President of the Board of Agriculture, with a seat in the cabinet, in the coalition government of H. H. Asquith.