Lord Jenkin obituary: Conservative peer whose essential decency shaped a lifetime of public service

Had any Labour Member of Parliament in the 1964-66 session been asked “If there is a Tory government in the 1980s or 1990s, who would you think would be the Prime Minister?” most of us would have said Christopher Chataway, Terence Higgins, Geoffrey Howe or – most likely – Patrick Jenkin. It would not have occurred to us to opt for the former Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions, Margaret Thatcher: and 10 years would go by before John Major would even be elected to the Commons.

Patrick Jenkin was chosen from among a teeming number of Conservative aspirants for a very special seat indeed – that of Woodford in Essex, which for the previous four decades had sent the same personage to Parliament: Winston Churchill.

In his maiden speech on 18 November 1964, Jenkin gave a taste of the graceful charm and felicitous language that characterised his public life:

"I intervene in this debate with even more diffidence than new Members are encouraged to display. For many maiden speakers, the tradition that one is expected to pay a graceful compliment to one’s predecessor comes as a welcome support during the first hesitant sentences. It is pleasant to be magnanimous, as the Member for Epping [Stanley Newens] was, to an opponent whom one has just defeated. It is not too difficult to pay due tribute to a Member who has retired. In my case, the position is far different, for I have the enormous privilege of representing the constituency which for the last 40 years has been represented by Sir Winston Churchill.

"What can I say about that great man that has not already been said with far more eloquence by those far more fitted to say it than I am?"

And he went on to pay tribute to Churchill in a very moving and unpretentious style. I saw the knights of the shires nodding and grunting their approval of how the “young fellow” expressed himself. He was on his way.

Patrick Jenkin was born the son of Charles Jenkin, a distinguished industrial chemist, in Edinburgh in 1926. In the late 1930s the family were in the United States with a senior job and so it came about that Jenkin’s “puppy schools” were American. This had a lasting effect, as he had an American attitude to enterprise and impatience with controls.

On the outbreak of war he returned to the Dragon School in Oxford, and entrance to Clifton College. During his National Service, 1945-48, he was commissioned with a Scottish regiment, the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, with whom he served abroad on combat duty. Though not a Scot by gene, in spite of his Celtic good looks, he took a lasting interest in the constitutional problems which have emerged between Scotland and England, often recalling that he had been born in the Scottish capital and had served for three years with “Jocks”.

Arriving at Jesus College, Cambridge, a maturish student of 22, he took a first class honours degree in Law and in 1951 was Harmsworth Scholar at the Middle Temple. I saw him at close quarters on a succession of Finance Bill committee stages and even such seasoned financial bill aficionados and Joe Barnett and Robert Sheldon agree that he was an outstandingly capable lawyer.

He was called to the Bar in 1952, but wisely, as an ambitious politician, he joined the Distillers Company to gain industrial experience. He also prepared himself for political office through membership of the Hornsey Borough Council, where he lost his seat in May 1963 as a result of strong attacks on the trade unions. In particular he attacked the lack of competition in the road haulage industry in a submission to the Guinness Committee.

In 1964, as a new MP, he took a very active part in the campaign of Ted Heath against Reginald Maudling for the leadership of the Conservative Party. He became almost immediately one of Heath’s trusted inner circle.

After the 1966 general election Jenkin, who had not put a foot wrong in mounting the ladder of political preferment, did one of those thoughtless things which can be a millstone round the neck of a politician for the simple reason that the lapse is remembered by his parliamentary colleagues.

On 21 July 1966 on the order paper as question eight to the Prime Minister Jenkin asked who gave authority for the use of official car, registered number 919 CLD, on Friday 1 July to convey Professor T Balogh and a lady from Hampstead to the West End of London; and why an official car was put at Professor Balogh’s disposal on this occasion.

Harold Wilson was beside himself that his close friend and economic adviser, a tutor at Balliol College, Oxford, who had a heart problem, should be treated in this way:

"The use of this car to bring Dr Balogh to the Cabinet Office had been authorised under the normal rules governing the use of official cars. The lady who travelled in the car on this occasion was another member of the Cabinet Office staff, who travelled with him in order to discuss necessary official business."

Pandemonium broke out. Jenkin asked a supplementary question:

"Will the Prime Minister confirm that there has been no change in the list of persons designated in a very long reply on 3 December 1951 by the then Prime Minister, Mr Churchill, of the people who are entitled to use official cars for personal use on the grounds they require police protection?"

Fury was unleashed. The Prime Minister, to thunderous applause from the Labour benches, rebuked Jenkin, who was reduced at that moment to an unpleasant whippersnapper.

"If the honourable gentleman had not withdrawn this morning the question he had intended to put, he would have had the full answer to the effect that the rules regarding the use of official cars are exactly the same as those carried out by our predecessors. As for Dr Balogh, as the House knows, he had a very severe heart attack last year."

Outrage.

"Honourable Members opposite, I know, are capable of sinking pretty low on occasion. In accordance with the rules, he was authorised to be brought into work by car. I suggest to the honourable Member, who boasted to the press that he had followed this car around in his own car for mile after mile, that if his hobby is collecting motor-car numbers he would be better employed consulting my honourable friend the Member for West Ham, North [Arthur Lewis, a colourful Member associated with road protest], who could teach him a lot about numbers."

There followed cutting references from Charles Pannell, the former Minister of Public Buildings and Works responsible for ministerial cars, who elicited from Wilson the response that the Government had not used its backbenchers to drive round London to spy on others; from Willie Hamilton, who called it a “squalid exercise”; from Manny Shinwell, who wanted Heath to “repudiate” Jenkin; and from Archie Manuel, who told him in railway man’s language to get “back into the sewers”.

In the next third of the century, in which I had a great deal to do with him, Jenkin never again did anything demeaning. In fact he managed to regain his reputation with Labour MPs because he was one of the 26 Tories who had voted for Harold Wilson’s sanctions against Ian Smith in Southern Rhodesia and continued to be brave about the problems of southern Africa.

In June 1970 he was appointed Financial Secretary, the third in seniority as a Treasury minister. I have never seen him so overcome with grief as on the day when his Chancellor, Iain Macleod, died in July 1970. The essence of his economic attitude can be summarised by his maiden speech on 13 November 1970 as a Treasury minister:

I say simply that the Government were elected on 18 June [1970] among other things to end the process whereby government expenditure rose year by year faster than the growth of the economy, resulting inevitably and inexorably year by year in an increased burden of taxation on the backs of the British people. This process was not only a major contributory cause of slow growth but was undoubtedly part of a cause of inflation. [Conservative] measures represent the beginning of the reversal of that process.

Jenkin was promoted to the No 2 spot under the new Chancellor, Anthony Barber, in April 1972 as Chief Secretary. He always regretted that he didn’t express more forcefully his doubts about the soaring money supply.

Just before the miners’ strike he was promoted Minister of Energy. Politicians have the misfortune of being remembered not for solid work but for one or two silly things which they might have done and, in truth, Jenkin made himself the object of ribald comment by urging that the nation save energy by toothbrushing in the dark. It also became clear that he used an electric razor, and the lights in his house were noticed to be unnecessarily bright.

In opposition his career flourished under Heath but on Margaret Thatcher’s becoming leader Jenkin was not “one of us”. However, his position in the party meant that he could not be demoted and he established a modus vivendi with the new opposition leadership being responsible for health. He argued for tax credit systems and against National Health Service trade unions’ assuming too much power. From his American experience, it weighed with him that a substantial proportion of bankruptcy in the United States came about as a result of the high costs of medicine and that the National Health Service in Britain, for all its shortcomings, was more satisfactory than the system in the United States.

In 1977 and 1978 he was one of few Conservatives who really gave his mind to the problems of Scotland and helped to rally his colleagues devote in favour of George Cunningham’s amendment and the 40 per cent rule on Scottish devolution.

When Margaret Thatcher came to Downing Street in 1979 Jenkin took over the huge department of Health and Social Security. He defended the cuts in social benefits and liberated consultants to practise privately after fulfilling their commitments to the National Health Service. Making his first speech as Secretary of State on 13 June 1979 he said:

“We will pay a Christmas bonus of £10 this year, and will take powers to pay it in subsequent years, fixing the amount by order. I hope to introduce the necessary legislation shortly.”

His critics thought that he was too prone to give cheap, popular solutions to enormous problems of resources.

In September 1981 he was switched – not promoted – to Industry, replacing Sir Keith Joseph. It was suspected that his heart was not in the cutbacks in industrial assistance which Thatcher was demanding to the huge detriment of many long established firms in British industry. It was the source of huge disappointment when Thatcher created the Trade and Industry department and gave it to Cecil Parkinson.

Jenkin had hoped at least to head the new department or, better still, go to the job which he really wanted – that of Chancellor of the Exchequer. Perhaps he ought to have realised that in no way would Margaret Thatcher have him as her neighbour at 11 Downing Street.

Environment was not a happy time for him. He was involved in enormous rows about the abolition of the Greater London Council and the Metropolitan Council. His rate-capping bill in January 1984 was very unpopular with many parliamentary colleagues and his rate-support grant proposals provoked a rebellion led by of all people Francis Pym, former Chief Whip and Foreign Secretary, who was incandescent with anger about the way that his Cambridgeshire councillors were being treated. Jenkin’s cabinet career came to a not unanticipated end.

It is hugely to Patrick Jenkin’s credit that he did not sulk or withdraw from public life. On the contrary, after he left the Commons in 1987 and was ennobled as Lord Jenkin of Roding, he threw himself into a whole number of useful activities. I saw him repeatedly as chairman of the Foundation for Science and Technology where he succeeded Lord Butterworth as host in the Royal Society to those very useful off-the-record fortnightly dinner meetings.

His industrial experience involved Arthur Andersen, the management consultant, Provident Life, the Thames Estuary Airport Company, Lamco Paper Sales, and the chairmanship of Crystalate Holdings. He was one of the least bitter ex-cabinet ministers whom I have known. In all the ups and downs of his life he was superbly supported by Alison his wife and his family, one of whom, Bernard Jenkin, is the Conservative MP for Harwich and North Essex.

Charles Patrick Fleeming Jenkin, politician: born Edinburgh 7 September 1926; married 1952 Alison Graham (two sons, two daughters); died Bury St Edmunds December 2016