Lord Wilberforce

Former senior law lord

At some hour each Monday to Thursday, when Parliament was sitting, usually between 6 and 7pm, a trim figure, with briefcase, would stride purposefully through the Commons Members' Lobby on his way to a lift, taking him to the Westminster Tube Station and back to his home near Sloane Square, writes Tam Dalyell, further to our obituary. This was the nonagenarian noble lord Richard Wilberforce – who outlived his distinguished obituarists R. F. V. Heuston and A. L. Rowse [19 February] – after a day's work in the House of Lords.

In 1997, the year Rowse died, he was enormously helpful to me, as he had been with his friends Lord Diplock and Lord Scarman in 1977-78, in giving legal advice to bolster opposition to Scottish and Welsh devolution. And only two months ago, having heard a BBC Radio 4 Great Lives programme, in which Anthony Howard and I discussed Dick Crossman, he initiated the idea that, since he had been at Winchester with Crossman, and knew his father, another Wykehamist Chancery lawyer, that there should be another radio talk among the three of us. This was not to be.

However, aged over 95, he had made a major contribution to the discussions on the Proceeds of Crime Bill. On 25 June 2002 he told the Lords:

One must remember the nature of the crime. It involves, on the one hand, the taking of a large sum of money in dealing with the persons concerned – young people, particularly girls – and, on the other hand, substantial immediate and long-term damage to the persons concerned. If one provides only for a fine and possibly imprisonment of the offenders, one is dealing with only half the problem. One has not dealt with the condition of the victims and has left them without means of recourse.

In March last year, in his 70th year of campaigning from the moment that he was elected to All Souls College, Oxford, he began his speech on the Trafficking: Children debate,

This debate is, literally and firmly, about slavery, as many speakers have said. It is true, if perhaps a little facile, to say that slavery has not been abolished; it has simply been modernised by the demographic changes that have taken place and by economic forces. France – a wise and logical country – has recognised this by setting up a committee under the appropriate name, Le Comité contre l'Esclavage Moderne – the Committee Against Modern Slavery. We ought to recognise trafficking for what it is.

His wife of 55 years, Yvette, daughter of Roger Lenoan, Judge of the Court of Cassation in France, can be sure that her husband's famous forebear would be proud of their campaigning against modern slavery conditions both in Britain and in Europe.