John Major: The Autobiography - John Major

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his gap-toothed grin suggested he knew it would not be wise.

      Norman Fowler believed in giving his junior ministers every opportunity to improve their profile in the media, especially if the interviews were very early in the morning or very late at night, and he was unfailingly supportive if things went wrong. Each Monday all the department’s ministers were expected to join him for lunch at a nearby pizza restaurant where, free of the office and officials, we could discuss the pure politics of what we were about. Since I saw a good deal of Norman and Tony I knew how their conversations would go, and since I loathe pizza I usually found a reason to miss the meal. It was some weeks before Norman realised why I was a permanent absentee, and the pizzas were replaced by salad lunches in the office. The lack of ministerial garlic in the afternoon was much welcomed by civil servants.

      I was well served by my officials, in particular by my Private Secretary Norman Cockett. Norman was bespectacled, with a full beard and a gentle good humour that took the sting out of every difficulty. He was never ruffled, the first of the many civil servants with whom I worked who were dedicated to public service. He put in the same killing hours as me. At his desk to brief me when I came into the office before breakfast, he was often still on hand when the House voted at 10 p.m., and sometimes did not leave for home until 2 a.m.

      It was Norman Cockett who showed me the effects of our decisions at the sharp end. Our first visit was to a benefits office in my constituency, a gentle introduction. Our next trip was shocking. We arrived at an inner-London social security centre just before midday, and did not leave until 3.30. For all of that time there were never fewer than a hundred unhappy people queuing to see the handful of stressed clerks dealing with their enquiries, and there were only thirty seats in the room. The office, I learned, had a staff turnover of more than 100 per cent a year. It was a grim place.

      The experience sowed some of the seeds in my mind of what would become the Citizen’s Charter. I saw no reason why people should suffer such scandalously poor service, and the following afternoon I sat down with Norman Cockett and produced a note on my visit for Norman Fowler, proposing that we sorted out the London benefits system. It led to a scheme which greatly improved the distribution of benefits in the capital.

      The post of parliamentary under secretary is really an apprenticeship: more senior positions beckon if the test is not flunked. Parliamentary under secretaries have the influence of access to more senior ministers, and take day-to-day decisions on how things are done, but policy is the prerogative of their more elevated colleagues. I was lucky at Social Security because very early on I appeared a lot in the Commons and helped to take through a significant piece of legislation. This gave me a profile I would not otherwise have received so early on, and is perhaps one reason my political career accelerated.

      I began to receive invitations to political events all over the country. One in particular sticks in my mind. In spring 1986 Robert Cranborne, a fellow Blue Chip and the Member for Dorset South, asked me to join a handful of other MPs on a panel of speakers at a Conservative Party event in a small village in his constituency. With me were Tristan Garel-Jones, still in the Whips’ Office; Virginia Bottomley, recently elected to the Commons and already Chris Patten’s Parliamentary Private Secretary; and Matthew Parris, who at an impending by-election would leave politics for journalism. We drove down to Dorset, and to pass the journey talked about the issues that might come up that night. Our conversation became light-hearted, and someone – I don’t remember which of us – suggested that we each write down a ‘frivolous fact’, and attempt to introduce it in our replies later that evening. The idea began as a joke, but by the time we arrived at the village hall we had dared each other to go ahead.

      Matthew spoke first, and crisply dropped his point – that Upper Volta had recently been renamed Burkina Faso, ‘the country of wise men’, into his reply to a question on women’s rights. Virginia was convincing in bringing out the fact that ‘frogs swallow with their eyes shut’ into her answer. My turn came next – and, suppressing my mirth, I succeeded in including the point that Anne Boleyn had six fingers on one hand in my piece. But Tristan failed dismally. Almost in stitches, he just about managed to keep a straight face, but dared not bring in his silly fact – I think it was that 18 per cent of the British population regularly share a bath. The following morning at breakfast, we put a white feather on his plate.

      Peter Bottomley, Virginia’s husband, also an MP, and a Transport minister, joined us for dinner at Cranborne Lodge. We told him what we had been up to, and he was sorry to have missed the fun. He made up for it when answering Transport questions in the Commons a few days later. One MP raised the matter of traffic congestion in Mayfair. ‘I have been down Park Lane on a bus,’ Peter informed the House. ‘I took a sandwich with me, and it was unfinished when I reached the other end. Unlike frogs, which eat with their eyes closed, I had mine open. Neither the bus nor the traffic was held up.’

      He was asked another question. ‘Like the first inhabitants of Burkina Faso,’ he began his reply, ‘the land of the wise men, otherwise known as Upper Volta, I might wonder whether it is right to take all those powers into my department’s hands.’

      His answer to a third question completed the set. ‘We can do many things with statistics. We can say that Anne Boleyn had six fingers or that 18 per cent of people share their baths. However, it is more important to consider each bus lane to see whether it is worthwhile.’

      Impressed by Peter’s bravura performance, when I bumped into Tristan I teased him, ‘Go and tell the Prime Minister.’ He did, though he was concerned that she might not see the joke. We need not have worried. ‘It’s the only good thing I’ve ever heard about Peter,’ she replied.

      As the summer of 1986 advanced, rumour hinted that I might be promoted again in the forthcoming reshuffle. I realised this was a possibility, but thought it unlikely, given my slender experience and the usual prime ministerial practice of leaving beginners in their jobs a little longer than a year. Although I was ambitious, I did not wish to leave Social Security until I had learned all I could in my role there.

      The fates, however, were generous. When the reshuffle came in September, Tony Newton was moved sideways within the department, becoming Minister of State for Health, and at Norman Fowler’s request I was promoted to Tony’s place as Minister of State for Social Security.

      Responsibility for the disabled now fell to me. Since the late 1970s, Norma had been involved with the charity Mencap, and for my part I vividly remembered the difficulties my father had faced when he lost his sight. So this was a job I relished on both these counts, and in addition because it has engendered its own fraternity. My predecessors in the role, on both sides of the House, treated me as one of their own. I was fortunate too that my new deputy as parliamentary secretary was an old friend, Nick Lyell, who as a lawyer had a gift for detail, and with whom I worked very easily. My new Private Secretary, Colin Phillips, soon introduced me to the delights of a steak lunch at the nearby Horse and Groom pub, where we spent many a jolly hour and took quite a few decisions. I was not to know that such pleasures would soon be curtailed as my anonymity fell away.

      The jump from parliamentary under secretary to full minister of state is a big one; it means you have entered the pool of ministers from which the Cabinet is chosen. I now attended far more of the Cabinet sub-committees that are the machinery of policy-making, and began to see government and its characters from the inside: who carried weight, who knew his or her brief, who was politically astute, and who had an overblown reputation. It soon became clear to me why rumours of reshuffle casualties were often so accurate – the Cabinet committees mercilessly exposed ministers who were not on top of their jobs or were out of sympathy with policy. Broad-brush answers or flip comments might suffice in the debating atmosphere of the Commons, but you had to be master of the detail to win your way in the committees.

      Within days of my appointment I realised that I would be responsible for replying to a debate at the Conservative Party Conference the following month. Despite years of attendance, and many attempts to speak from the floor, I had never been called to do so. Now, though unknown nationally, I was to speak from the platform. In retrospect I can see now that the Social Security debate that year was not of great importance, and in any event, the only speeches that really mattered were those of Cabinet ministers. But it did not feel

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