Rowing Against the Tide - A career in sport and politics (16 page)

One perhaps small thing that illustrates the changing world we live in, was an evening when the Prime Minister arranged a meeting with a couple of dozen new members at a club near the House. After the formalities and a few drinks, she reminded us that Kenneth Clarke would be winding up the debate that evening. Apart from Ken being a friend and my local MP, most wanted to hear him, and we all walked back, unchallenged, to the Commons, with Mrs T chatting away with colleagues. Could that happen now, whoever was in government?

Given a hectic General Election, the settling in to a new life, the excitement and fascination of those first few weeks in Parliament, and trying to establish decent office facilities, the Summer break was most welcome. It happened also to be Sally’s 40th Birthday, and we went to stay with one of her school friends who had married a Canadian professor at Trent University in Peterborough Ontario. We stayed one night in Toronto before our friends came to pick us up, and stopped off at a deli to try some bagels and pastrami. The waitress was a student, who promptly asked if we wouldn’t prefer a Kaiser. I said the only Kaiser I knew of was the guy that started the First World War, but the student reacted as if she’d never heard of the event, and said. “Let me get you one, I’ll pay”. It turned out to be a bread roll sprinkled with sesame seeds and stuffed with about twenty thin slices pastrami. Welcome to the diet conscious North America.

John and Anita Earnshaw, arranged for us to visit the local Provincial Parliament, and to meet their National Member Mr Bill Dom in Ottawa He was amazed that we had paid our own fare to come to Canada, indicating that so long as it was Air Canada, he could fly anywhere for free. Given his palatial office accommodation and staffing, I had to ask what he was allowed in expenses on top of his salary. I recall he had then in 1983, a budget of $250,000, plus four free publicity letters to each of his constituents per year. I asked given that kind of back-up that was unheard of back home, how could he possibly lose the seat. He simply replied “with difficulty”.

A briefing in Belize with Sir Geoffry Finsberg, Sir Nicholas Bonsor and John Wilkinson

Whilst we were in Canada, the Cecil Parkinson affair hit the headlines, and having sat in on a session in the Ottawa Parliament, we went out to dinner in a Japanese Restaurant, sitting round a large steel “table” on which the food was cooked and served. We found ourselves sitting with a man and a young lady, who introduced himself as one of the Members of the Canadian Parliament and his secretary. Given the “affair” back home, we tried very hard to keep straight faces.

At the Provincial Parliamentary session, Sally and I sat in the special gallery, and were welcomed publicly by the Speaker. A motion was put, and being challenged caused a vote. As expected the division bell rang and a flunkey came up to the gallery, and requested we joined the Speaker for coffee in his rooms behind the chair. Puzzled by the long delay, the Speaker pointed out that sometime back members had complained that they were unable to attend votes within the kind of eight minute rule that we had back home in Westminster. The Parties therefore had agreed that the bell would ring until the chief whips of the three or four parties in their House, were content that their members were present and the vote could be taken. They should have known that some awkward s** would see this as an opportunity to disrupt or delay proceedings, and allow the bell to ring and ring. Ours only rang for twenty five minutes, but the record had been fourteen days, with all but the bell in the main chamber having been blocked off before it drove everyone crazy. I gather they have changed back to a more reasonable time limit.

At home, the criticism of our PMQs is often that Prime Ministers never answer the questions, but Pierre Trudeau took this to a new level. When a member rose during their PMQs in the Ottawa Parliament to ask whether the prime Minster would comment on something or other, he simply rose and said Non ! I’ve yet to see any of our PMs be quite so dismissive.

Early on I found myself on the standing committee dealing with a Housing Bill, and when it reached the third reading on the floor of the chamber I was called at just before ten o’clock on a Thursday evening. As I rose to say my piece, my whip Douglas Hogg dropped onto the bench in front of me, and held up a card saying “The Scots want to catch the 10.30”. I took the hint, made some feeble comment and sat down. Needless to say Simon Hughes ignored the courtesy and rose to continue the debate.

Eighteen months on I was delighted to be asked by John Patten, the then Minister of State for Housing, to be his PPS. I did express surprise, for at my age I did not expect anything more than to work as a backbencher for my constituents, for whatever time the electorate allowed me. John was very clear; with my background in local government, and knowing that our City had been a Housing Authority, I could be of real assistance, and not just the proverbial bag carrier. This was at a time when “Yes Minister” was all the rage, and at our first morning meeting with the rest of the team of civil servants, John said “what am I saying today”. I stifled a laugh for it was the television programme writ large.

I dined most nights in the House, but occasionally walked back to the club for supper, before returning for the debate and vote later that night. On one occasion Michael Latham and I planned to take such a break, when it was clear that the second debate at 7 o’clock was of special interest to East Midland members, and we decided to stay. It was most fortuitous, for at 8 o’clock a bomb exploded at the club badly injuring a doorman and a member. I was PPS to David Waddington the Home Secretary at that time, and he gave me bed and board for the first week, and my colleague Michael Knowles did the same for week two, by which time I was able to return to the club to collect my belongings. No-one died directly as a result of the explosion, but sadly Lord Donald Kaberry, a really gentle giant of a man who had often joined us lesser mortals for breakfast , died within six months of the incident, and it was felt his death was as a result of the injuries received at the time.

The House voting arrangements undoubtedly puzzle many of the public, but those fifteen minutes going through the lobbies, often gave you the chance to buttonhole a minister, who would be willing to spare three or four minutes in the lobby, rather than having to set up a formal meeting in his Ministry wasting his and officials time. Often you might contact a minister’s PPS and ask if the minister would be voting that evening, and could he spare a few moments in the lobby. You therefore often saw ministers sitting on the side benches chatting to a colleague before moving to register their vote with the clerks.

The strangest and intriguing vote for me was on the fluoridisation of water, where the main speaker opposing the bill was Ivan Lawrence. We were in standing committee considering another Bill, and popped up and down stairs as each vote was called. My home City of Nottingham was firmly against fluoridisation, and I was voting accordingly. Lennox Boyd was our whip and remarked that I was consistently voting against him. I said it was a free vote, and I would continue to do so. It was already late at night, and Lennox suggested I went back to the club, have a rest, and come back in the early morning. I walked back through St James Park to the club, showered, had around two hours sleep, and arrived back at the House four hours later, just as the voting bell rang at the end of Lawrence’s over four hour speech. Lennox did not know whether to laugh or cry, but I hadn’t missed a single vote against that bill.

A more amusing outcome of a bill was whilst I was PPS in the Home Office, and Douglas Hurd was taking an amendment to our licensing laws through the House. Whilst the majority of members were in favour of the changes, there were a number of very vocal members opposed to any change, but finally agreed to support the Bill so long as the constraints on Sunday drinking remained untouched. With this undertaking given, it went though the Commons without too much difficulty, and was then sent up to the Lords, where our Minister of State was a wonderful guy, the Lord Robin Ferrers. At the usual morning “prayers” in the department around nine o’clock the morning after the Lords had, contrary to the promise, voted for an extra hour drinking at Sunday lunchtime, Lord Ferrers came in when most of the team were already sitting round the table. Lord Harmer Nicholls who had been the member for Peterborough and famous for holding the seat with single figure majorities, had proposed that amendment to the Bill. Lord Ferrers grabbed me before he joined the group, and from his great height of some six foot four or more, said “Martin I did say ‘not content’, I assure you I did, but it wasn’t heard and the vote was carried. What will Douglas do?” I said he wouldn’t get hung, but as we joined the group round the table, there was general laughter and slapping of the table. Happily no one in the Commons attempted to overturn the Lords vote, and when we go out now for Sunday lunch we can enjoy an extra hour of relaxed drinking. For Lord Ferrers it was a source of great satisfaction and delight, for he received a letter from someone who assured him that forever on a Sunday when he took his family out to lunch, they would raise a toast the The Lord Ferrers.

In my nine years in the House I was fortunate to have been successful in two ballots for private members bills, and one to have choice of a Friday morning debate. The first Bill in March 1990, dealt with certain transport matters that all sides of the House were happy to support. One clause dealt with safety matters at night, for a famous rowing colleague had recently been killed cycling into the back of an unlit skip parked in the road, with no other lighting to warn of the danger. It passed all stages, and was given a fair wind and their blessing from the Labour front bench that final Friday morning. I was greatly angered when Andrew Bennett, the Labour member for Denton and Reddish called a vote knowing that there would be insufficient members present to see the bill through. He assured me he supported my Bill, and that it would in the future get through, but he was apparently angry that there would not be enough time left for a private member’s bill further down on the list that morning, and it was his way of protesting. Happily it ultimately reached the statute book the following session of Parliament, but under the name of Bill Cash who did not have the courtesy to recognise the work done by colleagues in that previous session.

The other Bill in December 1991, near the end of my time in the House, arose from the dreadful case of child abuse in some children’s homes in Leicestershire, some twenty or so years earlier. What struck me as grossly unjust, was that a perfectly innocent member of the House was referred to in the trial, and who could not in law defend himself without being held in contempt of court. As I assume would many members, they would have occasionally offered hospitality for an evening meal, away from a Council Care Home, to some of these children in their constituencies, and one or two made clear that if they could be faced with the suspicion raised in that trial, they would not risk such censure ever again. In addition, the children, now adults, were named, and many had put their traumas behind them, moved on, married and had families. They too had no redress, and so with the help of civil servants in the Home Office, a bill was put together, that gave lifelong anonymity to young persons affected in this way. Being a private members bill, it took time to get through all stages, and I found myself at the bar of their Lordship’s House for it’s final stage, barely a couple of weeks before the 1992 election, and I feared that one of the press barons would cause a delay and scupper the measure on grounds of freedom of the press. Happily he backed down, and I was proud to have been able to do some small thing for those abused children.

With a UK delegation meeting Israeli President Itzak Shamir

My Friday morning slot was devoted to Housing matters, the benefits of the Right to Buy, the unfairness of housing allocations, and the manner in which those who knew how to work the rules, claimed priority over those who played fair, and who often in my view were more deserving. I had a number of cases where a couple wanted to marry and sought a Council House, to be told “well get pregnant and you’ll go to the top of the list”. This was not what any of them wanted to do, but illustrated just how so called modern thinking was degrading society. The earlier Housing Act had given Local Authorities the right to declare that a tenant having been evicted for unreasonable and prolonged misbehaviour, could be said to have made themselves homeless, and therefore Local Authorities were not legally required to re-house them. Sadly they never used that sanction, the trouble makers knew they wouldn’t, and therefore almost to this day, the problem of anti-social behaviour on housing estates remains unresolved. The worst and saddest case on my patch was a single young mother with many boyfriends, who had been allocated a house in a quiet cul-de-sac. After months of trouble she was finally evicted, but the Council felt they had to re-house her. With two small children that would have seemed the right thing to do, but lo and behold, some idiot in the Housing Department allocated her back to the same house from which she had been evicted. She arranged a celebration party, which ended in fire, and her two little children were burned to death.