Death of a Member: Baroness Thatcher

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, this has been a fascinating afternoon and early evening of paying tribute to an extraordinary lady. I am sure that history will be more accurate as a result. She has been shown to be not only an iron lady but a caring and sensitive woman.

She changed the lives of many of us. I remember sitting in the Lords’ Gallery in another place in 1979 at the vote of no confidence, watching some left-wing Labour MPs singing the “Red Flag” and thinking, “Who is going to be able to change this?”. Mrs Thatcher stopped the rot of what politicians had been doing for so long and what they started to go back to once she had been unceremoniously removed from power. They used to agree to take firm action but, by the time they had got back to their desks, their resolve had started to wane and the condition of the country, as so many have said, deteriorated. She gave not just herself but all of us a belief and a confidence that things could change. It required a woman to give us men and other women that backbone and inspiration and the belief that a country could be changed if you had the commitment.

She changed my life through the kind offices of our great Chief Whip at the time, my noble friend Lord Denham. I was asked to become a member of her Government in 1984. My noble friend Lord Hill of Oareford referred to her small, thoughtful actions. I had never met my Prime Minister when I was invited to a reception in Downing Street. I was taken by my kinsman by marriage, the late Earl of Swinton. I said, “David, will you introduce me?”. He did. There was a receiving line with many more important people behind me. Mrs Thatcher stopped, took me out of the line and spent five minutes showing me the pictures and other important things in Downing Street. For any chief executive to take time out with the newest employee of the company is extraordinary. We have heard other, similar tributes. How did that lady manage to find the time every day to make other people feel that they were important?

The noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, mentioned that she was a glutton for hard work and detail. After six months in the Home Office studying prisons day in and day out, I was summoned to a meeting with her and found that she knew far more about prisons than I did at the time. I came out of the meeting thoroughly chastened and realised that unless I learnt more and more I would be one of the next to be sacked from her Government—and rightly, because she was the chief executive. How did she know more about the one little section of the Home Office of which I was in charge, when she had a whole country to run? I thought that that was an amazing example of briefing and retentive memory, as well as of the experience by that stage of having been Prime Minister for a number of years.

There is one aspect that noble Lords have not mentioned. We have talked about how she changed her mind but not about how loyal she was when she had changed her mind. I remember this from my time as a junior Minister. Most of the speeches today have been from former Secretaries of State in another place. I am one of the diminishing band of people who have been elected to this House rather than appointed to it by a Prime Minister and have been part of the Government. When I was at the Department of the Environment, I had a discussion with her and she agreed to change a policy. It was a long and tough discussion that involved various other departments. When she grasped that the policy needed changing, she was the one who led from the front, leaving one carrying the standard behind her. I had never experienced a chief executive like that in all the jobs that I had done in the private sector. I had never experienced that sort of leadership. It was tremendous support for a junior Minister—not just for tea ladies and staff, or Secretaries of State, but for all levels of government. With a Government of 100 people, and given the number of times they change, it is a remarkable lady to whom we pay tribute today.

It is always an honour to be asked to serve your country as a member of a Government. To me it was a particular privilege to be the loyal lieutenant of an amazing lady who changed the way our country operates.