Authors: Rosa Prince
Standing Down (20 page)
His time at the Department of Health was cut short by the 1997 election, when the Conservatives were booted out of office on a wave of popular support for Tony Blair’s New Labour Party.
It was his lowest point in the Commons and after a desultory year as shadow Education Secretary he decided to return to the back benches and focus again on his business career. The decision brought his ministerial life to a halt at the age of forty-five and deprived his party, and British politics, of one of the brighter minds of his generation. But he doesn’t regret his decision, and wasn’t tempted to reconsider when the Conservatives returned to government in 2010.
Instead, he took off in a new and exciting direction, becoming one of the first elected chairmen of a Commons committee in serving on the Health Committee for four years.
Of the decision to stay on the back benches for so long, he says:
It’s a choice rather than a disappointment.
I would have enjoyed being in front-line politics but also I’ve been a businessman. That’s the choice I made, to remain actively involved in business.
I always wanted to do it on my own terms. It was partly wanting to be engaged in business and feeling I could do things and also I did find the opposition years pretty frustrating. Long and frustrating.
Chairmanship of the Health Committee breathed new life into his time in the Commons:
I said when I stood for the chair that if you want somebody that’s just going to deliver abstruse reports on obscure subjects that just gather dust, well, I’m not your guy.
When I was chair, what we consciously sought to do was engage real-time in current political debate and to demonstrate that you can do that on a cross-party basis.
When we were setting out the direction we thought policy should pursue in healthcare it was always done on a cross-party basis. I think that in itself is significant.
Mr Dorrell’s decision to stand down was not an obvious one for him. Ultimately, he arrived at the conclusion as the culmination of a series of events, starting with his decision a year ago to step down as chairman of the Health Committee:
After four years [as chairman] I didn’t relish the thought of spending the final year of the Parliament, as I feared I was going to, looking back.
The select committee I felt was becoming less interesting, in that as the Parliament got to its close, it was more about a blame game and who said what to whom.
When I stepped down from the select committee I at that time started to think about what I wanted to do with the rest of my working life.
At that date [I] had intended to remain in Parliament and to continue to develop other political interests. In fact I had been re-selected and said I wanted to stand again.
The news of his departure from the committee inspired a number of approaches from the business community, inviting him to take on more and more work.
When, last autumn, KPMG came knocking with an offer to become a consultant, and in a role involving a degree of international travel, he concluded he would no longer have the time to serve as an MP.
The appointment proved controversial in some circles, particularly because KPMG was considering bidding for an NHS contract. It was not the first time Mr Dorrell had been accused of impropriety in relation to his business and political activities, but he says he feels ‘comfortable’ with the way he has conducted his affairs:
I do feel comfortable. You can make a case, which I don’t agree with, that the House of Commons should be a kind of bubble, its Members shouldn’t have active engagement in outside interests.
I make the opposite case, which is that Parliament should reflect the community it serves. It’s better if back-bench MPs are free to and in fact in my view should be encouraged to have outside engagements in professional life, in trade union activity, in the life of the nation.
There’s always a risk that Westminster is divorced, lives in a bubble. I don’t say it’s removed but it is reduced if MPs have active engagement in outside interests.
I’ve always done that. It’s become more noticed more recently.
Allergic to the word ‘retirement’, Mr Dorrell will continue to take a keen interest in politics and public life and will be cheering the Conservatives on at the 2015 general election.
He feels particularly strongly that the party should campaign on the strengths of their economic argument:
I shall be actively campaigning for a Tory victory in the general election because although I won’t be Member of the House of Commons, I’ll be living in the country after the election.
The key argument for me is the economic policy argument. There’s a huge opportunity, but also a huge task, to build on the successful economic record of this government.
It is a privilege to serve here. It is service. It’s a privilege but I’ve also enjoyed it.
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CV
Born in Worcester; attended Oxford University; student politics led to work for local MP (Cabinet minister Peter, later Lord, Walker of Worcester).
1974: Unsuccessfully fights Hull East
1979: Elected MP for Loughborough, becomes ‘baby of the House’
1983: Becomes PPS to Lord Walker
1987: Joins Whips’ Office
1990: Becomes Health Minister
1992: Becomes financial secretary to the Treasury
1994: Becomes Secretary of State for National Heritage
1995: Becomes Health Secretary
1997: Elected MP for Charnwood; becomes shadow Education Secretary
1998: Returns to back benches
2001: Supports Michael Portillo’s unsuccessful campaign to become leader
2010: Elected chairman of Commons Health Committee
2014: Steps down from Health Committee; takes up major role with KPMG; announces he will stand down at 2015 general election
Sir George Young
, seventy-three, was Conservative MP for Ealing Acton (1974–83) and North West Hampshire (1983–2015).
‘I’ve had a fantastic run of luck and it’s time for someone else to have a go.’
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Instead of grumbling about what was going on, we decided to stand for the council and try to do something. It went from there.
I spent a lot of time in the constituency working very hard because I needed to. I knew it was going to be very tough.
Secretary of State for Transport, being given two years in which to get an industry from the public sector to the private sector with a wafer-thin majority here. That was a high.
I didn’t actually enjoy rebelling [over the Poll Tax]. These were people with whom I had been in government for seven years working collegiately with who were my friends and you were having to say you disagree very strongly.
I decided shortly after 2010 that this would be my last parliament. I would have done forty-one years. As the parliament evolved I couldn’t see what I would be doing in the next parliament, either in opposition or in government but either way I’m going to be back on the back benches. And, hey, it’s time for someone else to have a go. I’ve had a fantastic run of luck and it really is time to move on.
Yes. It does mean I don’t have to spend three weeks banging on doors. I will help a few of my friends in marginal seats but I won’t be going at the same pace as if you’re leading a team in your own seat.
Talk to your wife, or husband, or partner. Make sure they understand what the commitment is and they’re happy about it. This place can pick apart a relationship. I’ve been in the Whips’ Office three times and sadly you see that.
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the full story
The son of a baronet with an education at Eton and Oxford, it was perhaps no surprise that Sir George became a Conservative, although he insists it was politics rather than the Conservative Party that had always ‘been in the veins’.
Living in Clapham, south London, in the late 1960s while their country house was being renovated, he and his wife were aghast at some of the living conditions of those around them, and put their names forward for seats on Lambeth Council. This led to the Greater London Council and then to selection as the MP for Acton ahead of the general election of February 1974:
Instead of grumbling about what was going on we decided to stand for the council and try to do something. It was a reaction to where we were living but wanting to do something about it.
In the ’70s you could see the country not going quite the right way. It needed a change. I was working for the Post Office and I was on the BT side [British Telecom, which was then part of the Post Office] and I could see that actually it would be much better if it would be in the private sector. You could see that every penny you invested had to come from the government and that constrained what you could do. When I became an MP I was quite keen on freeing it from the shackles.
He says local knowledge helped him with his selection:
When they were looking for a candidate for the seat [of Acton, west London], which was a new seat, I had some kind of local credibility. I got in by about 1,300 in February, then there was another election in October and I should have been out on the swing but hung on by 808. I was sure I was going to lose in October, on the swing.
I was interested in housing partly because of the Lambeth background. Also, in Acton there were some real housing challenges: overcrowding, tower blocks without facilities. In fact, I ended up as housing minister in two separate parliaments. I had an advice bureau every day in Acton. I spent a lot of time in the constituency working very hard because I needed to, I knew it was going to be very tough.
Sir George was successful in hanging on and by 1976 was an opposition whip. After the 1979 election he joined the government, Margaret Thatcher’s first, as a junior health minister.
He found himself juggling a marginal constituency that needed a great deal of attention while coping with late votes in the Commons and 8.30 a.m. starts at the ministry. He says: ‘It was quite hard work – marginal seat, minister, late nights – but at the same time not grumbling.’
Politically, he was not quite on board with the Thatcher project, having abstained in the first ballot of the 1975 leadership election that brought her to power in the hope that Willie Whitelaw would enter at a second ballot, which never took place:
[He] is slightly more my side of the party. I come from the more mainstream Tory Reform Group end of the party, always have done, and so I voted for Willie.
In fact I don’t think I voted for the winner in an election until David [Cameron] won. I voted for Willie, and then for Hezza [Michael Heseltine], then for Ken [Clarke] and Ken and Ken. Michael Howard wasn’t contested – I seconded Michael Howard. And then I voted for David, but only after Ken had been eliminated.
If Ken had beaten William [Hague] we would still have lost, I think, in 2001, but we wouldn’t have lost by quite as much, and then, of course, William could have come on a little later.
I have always voted loyally for the more centrist of the two candidates.
Despite not being an early supporter of Mrs Thatcher, Sir George served loyally until 1986, when he resigned over the community charge, known by critics as the Poll Tax:
I admired the lady, she was good enough to give me a job, [and] I supported the policies we produced in the 1980s.
I’m not a natural rebel but I could see that community charge for people I represented in Acton going up, and my own community charge for my home in the country was going to go down, and it was very difficult to justify a sort of regressive tax and I rebelled and I voted against it all the way through and sort of organised the opposition to it.
Possibly the biggest mistake any government’s ever made and we put right [after John Major became leader]. Amazing accomplishment.
Sir George enjoyed ministerial life – and felt privileged to serve as a Cabinet minister under John Major:
Most people come in and hope at some point to be a minister. You come in hoping to change things and it’s easy to change things if you’re in the executive. You pull the lever and it’s connected to the machine and things happen.
Nearly half my time here, slightly under half, has been as a minister. I was a housing minister for quite a long time, and if you stay in one job for quite a long time you do understand how things work and what you want to do.
It was quite challenging being Secretary of State for Transport and getting the whole of the railway into the private sector in two years. When I got there the legislation had been passed but nothing had actually been sold and we were beginning to lose our majority. So that was actually quite challenging, setting up Railtrack, letting all the franchises to the rail operating companies, disposing of the freight companies and making sure that the whole system worked.
Not a popular policy at the time, the Labour Party threatened to repeal the legislation, which they didn’t, but that of course affected the price we could get when we sold it, political uncertainty.
At that time I was also moving seats. My seat was being abolished but I was still the MP for Acton. But for the last two years of that Parliament I was also the candidate somewhere else – in North West Hampshire.
So Secretary of State for Transport, in the Cabinet, two constituencies to look after, a wafer-thin majority (therefore having to be around), but also doing the heavy lifting that Cabinet ministers do going around the country, supporting colleagues, conferences, overseas visits. So I suppose that was the busiest two years of my life. A great privilege to sit round the table and share responsibility for the destiny of one’s country.
John Major was a very old friend and still remains an old friend. I have great affection and admiration for him. And he was a very good Prime Minister. The more people come to a view about some of his successors the better he does by comparison.
Sir George survived the Labour landslide of 1997, thanks mainly to a timely move to North West Hampshire:
We did jolly well to win the ’92 election with John and I think we all knew we weren’t going to come back in ’97.
I was quite lucky in the sense that although I was very disappointed that my seat got abolished, because I was very fond of Ealing Acton, if it hadn’t been abolished I’d have lost it. But because it disappeared I had to find somewhere else, so I survived the swing.
Sir George settled into life in opposition. Disappointment was to follow however when he twice failed to be elected to the office of Speaker:
I left William’s shadow Cabinet in 2000 to stand against Michael Martin in the first of two Speaker elections. It was tribal. It was, ‘Do you want one of us or do you want a Tory toff?’ I think Michael Martin was elected solely on the basis of Labour votes. I got quite a few votes from Labour MPs, but there were so many of them because of the Labour landslide. And I do think it’s best if a Speaker does have votes from both sides.
If you go in for an election you obviously hope to win. I left and then stayed on the back benches until David [Cameron] brought me back in 2009 just before the last election. In retrospect losing meant I could be Leader of the House, Chief Whip, back in the Cabinet. The disappointment was modified.
Sir George became Leader of the House after the election, the role he had shadowed from 2009. He was in government but free from the tyranny of the ministerial red boxes.
He found himself in a Cabinet with a Prime Minister and Chancellor much younger than he was, and sitting alongside Liberal Democrats:
If you’ve been here for some time you understand how the House works, how the clerks work, what the House will put up with and won’t put up with.
You’ve just got to be here all the time keeping an eye on what’s going on in the chamber, and in my case pushing through an agenda of reform. I enjoyed that.
If you’re a secretary of state you expect to be quite busy. If you’re Leader of the House it’s a totally different sort of job. You’ve got a small but very able number of people in a very small department.
David is very good at managing people whatever their age and background. In a Cabinet you need a range of ages and people. You need the young, dynamic and enthusiastic and you need people who have been around a bit, like Ken Clarke, who can say, ‘Well, we looked at that thirty years ago and it didn’t work’, or ‘it did work’, and you need that.
David has always been very good at being collegiate in Cabinet, making sure the Liberal Democrats have their say, and working very hard to reach a consensus.
They are very close friends from Monday to Thursday; from Friday to Sunday, back in the constituency, they are opponents.
The only people who benefit if the coalition is not a success are the Labour Party. So you have that in common.
For much of the time if you sat round the Cabinet table and listened you wouldn’t know which party someone came from for a lot of the time. A lot of it is people representing their departmental interests. So it is a lot more collegiate and consensual than I think people realise.
At the 2012 reshuffle, he was happy to quietly stand down, especially as his departure was accompanied by the sweetener of a knighthood, only to return a few weeks later in the wake of the resignation of Andrew Mitchell as Chief Whip:
I was very relaxed about leaving in that there’s a lot of talent on the back benches and the only way you can make room for that talent is if people can move on. Widely trailed, not surprised, very relaxed, and very pleased to get a gong. A CH. That was a surprise. A great honour. There aren’t very many of them. That was much appreciated.
Six weeks or however long it was later David needed a new Chief Whip and having reshuffled everybody I think he took the view [that] he didn’t want to reshuffle everyone again, so [it was sensible to] bring someone on from the substitutes bench, and I had been in the Whips’ Office twice before.
I’m not a muscular whip. I’m not a sort of black arts person. Someone said the Chief Whip needs a mixture of menace and charm and I don’t think I have that sort of menace. He rang up and I said I will have to speak to my wife about this, which I did, and she roared with laughter. And then I did it for what, two years. Totally unexpected, I assumed I would spend the rest of this parliament on the back benches.
But basically if you are in public life and the Prime Minister rings you up and asks you to do something, then you do it. Because otherwise what are you doing in public life if you don’t respond to a challenge?
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CV
Born in Oxford; attended Oxford University; became a banker and economic adviser to the Post Office.
1974: Elected MP for Acton in February election; unexpectedly holds seat in October election
1976: Becomes opposition whip
1979: Becomes Health Minister
1981: Becomes Environment Minister
1986: Resigns in protest at the Poll Tax
1990: Brought back to government as whip; becomes Housing Minister
1994: Becomes financial secretary to the Treasury
1995: Becomes Transport Secretary
1997: Becomes shadow Defence Secretary
1998: Becomes shadow Leader of the House
2000: Unsuccessfully stands to become Speaker of the Commons
2009: Unsuccessfully stands to become Speaker of the Commons for a second time; becomes shadow Leader of the House
2010: Becomes Leader of the House
2012: Stands down from government in reshuffle; returns a few weeks later as Chief Whip in the wake of Andrew Mitchell’s resignation
2013: Announces he will be retiring at the 2015 general election
2014: Returns to back benches
Sir George Young is married to Aurelia and has four grown-up children,
Sophia, George, Hugo and Camilla.