Lord Hogg of Cumbernauld: Hard-working MP who as Deputy Chief Opposition Whip helped hold the Labour Party together in the 1980s

The years 1983 to 1987 were dog days for the Parliamentary Labour Party. It was a very unhappy period. The party had been trounced by Mrs Thatcher in the 1983 general election; the very existence of the party was questioned by some. Nobody did more to hold the party together and lay the foundations of revival under Neil Kinnock than Norman Hogg, the emollient, immensely hard-working, sensitive but firm Deputy Chief Opposition Whip, a pivotal position in the running of Parliament.

He also played a fateful role in the history of the Labour Party in 1983 in that position when, with responsibility for Labour MPs' accommodation in the Palace of Westminster, he decided that the new MP for Sedgefield, Tony Blair, should be relieved of having to share a cramped office with the self-proclaimed militant Marxist MP for Coventry, Dave Nellist. Instead, Hogg decided that he would be allowed to share with a different new Labour MP, the Member for Dunfermline East, Gordon Brown.

Norman Hogg was born in 1938. His father, Norman Hogg, was a distinguished Lord Provost of Aberdeen from 1964 to 1967, and his mother, the former Mary Wilson, was a legendary success in the Granite City as Lord Provost's wife. After Ruthrieston Secondary School in Aberdeen, Hogg worked in local government. At the age of 29 he became a district officer of Nalgo, the local government officers' trade union, whom he served for 12 years as a full-time officer and whose interests he was to champion throughout his time at Westminster. He made himself an expert on the gas industry, in which area he made many useful parliamentary contributions.

When Hugh McCartney retired in 1979, Hogg was chosen to fight the difficult seat of East Dunbartonshire against the Scottish Nationalist Margaret Bain, later Margaret Ewing. He won the election, and Michael Martin, the present Speaker of the House of Commons, was elected to Parliament on the same day.

As trade union officials, they had the bond of being from the same background. Hogg was the first of the 1979 intake to take the chair of the Scottish Labour MPs' group and the Speaker told me: "Norman was promoted from the chair of Scottish MPs to the Whips' Office as Labour Scottish Whip. He took to it like a duck to water. It was a very fractionalised Party. Norman was absolutely even-handed in his treatment of colleagues. He was always sincere in his approach, which coincided with his being an extremely serious Christian Socialist. He was a very close friend of John Smith [later leader of the Labour Party] and Donald Dewar [later First Minister of Scotland] but this did not prevent him from disagreeing with them and telling them to their face what he thought."

Hogg showed great understanding of the position of those of us who would not give an inch to devolution. I have no doubt whatever that as the arch anti-devolutionist, I would have got a far rougher time than I did in the Parliamentary Party if it had not been for Hogg robustly defending my right to disagree. He believed that the establishment of a Scottish Parliament would be disastrous for Aberdeen, for Scotland, for Britain and for the Labour Party – and was a foe of Scottish nationalism not least because he had had epic battles in his own constituency against Gordon Murray, a prominent Scottish Nationalist, who was Cumbernauld' SNP Provost (the ceremonial head of the local authority).

Boundary alterations in 1983 changed the East Dunbartonshire seat to Cumbernauld and Kilsyth. At the time Hogg won East Dunbartonshire he lived in Bearsden but when he became MP for Cumbernauld, he felt it incumbent on him to move house and live in his constituency, against the wishes of his wife, Elizabeth, who was an extremely well-regarded social worker, prominent in Christian causes.

Hogg was very disappointed in 1985 when, in an election for the position of Chief Whip, he was defeated by Neil Kinnock's Parliamentary Private Secretary Derek Foster, the MP for Bishop Auckland in Co Durham, but he did become a Scottish Affairs spokesman after the 1987 general election. In 1988 he accepted an invitation by the Speaker of the House of Commons, Bernard Weatherill, to become a member of the Speaker's Panel of Chairmen (to chair Standing Committees of the House), serving until 1997.

Scrupulously fair and with a subtle sense of humour, he was a gifted member, liked and respected, both as a chairman – where he was decisive and sensible – and as an extremely nice colleague to Members in all political parties. He was considered by some as not only a possible Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means – the Chairman of Ways and Means is the House's Deputy Speaker – but a potential Speaker himself.

In the same period he shared responsibility with Michael Martin for chairing the Scottish Grand Committee – a committee of the House of Commons comprised of all Scottish MPs which debated matters remitted to it by the House – at a time when it was peripatetic, as a sop to nationalism, holding meetings in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen.

In 1997 he was created Lord Hogg of Cumbernauld, the new town in North Lanarshire that he had represented with distinction, and he became a Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords in 2002. In the Lords he was never strident, always constructive, and seriously assiduous, giving a good name to politically appointed working peers.

The position which gave him most satisfaction, since he was a very sincere churchman, was that of Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1998 and 1999, representing the Queen with considerable charm and distinction. Lady Marion Kerr Fraser, his predecessor as Lord High Commissioner, said, "Norman Hogg was welcoming, dignified, and most acceptable to the Church of Scotland. He looked right in the job. He was aware of the significance of his position representing the Queen in Holyrood House."

Rosemary McKenna MP, Hogg's successor as the representative of Cumbernauld and Kilsyth, and vice-chairman of the Constituency Labour Party at the time of his selection as their candidate, recalled: "Norman Hogg had a wonderful sense of humour and particularly a sense of the ridiculous. He was incredibly well respected in the constituency."

Tam Dalyell

Norman Hogg, trade union officer and politician: born Aberdeen 12 March 1938; member of Aberdeen town council 1953-67; District Officer, National Association and Local Officer's Association 1967-79; MP (Labour) for East Dunbartonshire 1979-83, for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth 1983-97; Scottish Labour whip 1982-83; Deputy Chief Opposition Whip 1983-87; Member of Chairman's Panel, House of Commons 1988-97; created 1997 Baron Hogg of Cumbernauld; Lord High Commissioner, General Assembly, Church of Scotland 1998-99; a Deputy Speaker, House of Lords 2002-05; married 1964 Elizabeth McCall Christie; died Aberdeen 8 October 2008.