Sir Angus Fraser

Angus McKay Fraser: civil servant and writer: born Maxwelltown, Dumfriesshire 10 March 1928; Under-Secretary and Commissioner, HM Customs and Excise 1972-73, 1976-78, Deputy Chairman, Board of Customs and Excise 1978-80, Chairman 1983-87; Under-Secretary, Civil Service Department 1973-76, Deputy Secretary 1980-83; First Civil Service Commissioner 1981-83; CB 1981, KCB 1985; Adviser to the Prime Minister on Efficiency and Effectiveness in Government 1988-92; President, George Borrow Society 1991-2001; FSA 1991; married 1955 Margaret Neilson (one son, and one daughter deceased; marriage dissolved 1968), 1991 Gillian Fenwick (née Manning; one stepdaughter); died Munich 27 May 2001.

Angus Fraser was Chairman of the Board of Customs and Excise, Efficiency Adviser to two prime ministers and scholar. A tall, handsome Scot, he blended charm and a pleasing self-assurance with intellectual and administrative ability.

Fraser's father was in the Prison Service. After Falkirk High School, Glasgow University and National Service, Fraser followed him into the public service, entering Customs and Excise in 1952. He had the classical career of the "high flyer". He alternated between his own department and the centre of Whitehall (Treasury, 1961-64, Civil Service Department, 1973-76, and again, 1980-83). On promotion to Deputy Secretary in 1978, he was in succession Deputy Chairman of the Board of Customs and Excise, Deputy Secretary in CSD and First Civil Service Commissioner. Fraser returned to Customs and Excise as Chairman in 1983 and retired early four years later.

As an official, Fraser had the look of a man whose interest in and enjoyment of life went further than Whitehall. He had substantial achievements to his name, not least in the repeated negotiations for accession to the EEC and in the design of VAT, so necessary to it, and in developing the practice and theory of management in central government, but he seemed better acquainted with fresh air and the world beyond London than some of his colleagues.

After his first military experience as a National Service Gunner, Fraser gave another 14 years part-time service as a Territorial in 44 Parachute Brigade, rising to Major. As a schoolboy, his imagination was captured by the life and writings of George Borrow on whom, and the gypsies, he became an acknowledged expert and author. An ardent bibliophile, he befriended and was befriended by the London Library. His deep, strong and varied private interests were marked by the award of the Territorial Officers' Decoration in 1965, Fellowship of the Society of Antiquaries in 1991 and the DLitt of his own university in 1993.

Having left Whitehall early to pursue his other interests, Fraser answered the call of duty from Margaret Thatcher to succeed Sir Robin Ibbs as her Efficiency Adviser in 1988. The surprise with which his appointment was greeted in some quarters was misplaced. Although the first two advisers, Sir Derek Rayner and Ibbs, were businessmen, it was central to Rayner's previous work in Whitehall and to his philosophy that the Civil Service could and would reform itself, provided always that reform was plugged into a reliable source of political will. Raynor envisaged that an official with the right track record could and should be the Prime Minister's right hand in the improvement of management and administration.

Fraser was a zestful choice. His temperament, his experience (departmental, "central", EEC and military), his sense of humour, his lack of deference and his demeanour made him a natural ally for a prime minister who liked the men around her to know their own mind and to bear the stamp of authority and determination. He then served John Major for two years, being succeeded by Sir Peter Levene, the last holder of the office before it was put into abeyance by Tony Blair.

Fraser's successful career in Customs and Excise was very relevant. Taxation is an ancient form of public administration. The lineage of customs officers includes St Matthew, Geoffrey Chaucer and Robert Burns. Today's Board of Customs and Excise dates back to 1671. The intimate, universal and sometimes bloody association between Excisemen and all of us always carries the risk of setting State and people at odds.

The chairmen of the two tax departments, the Inland Revenue and the Customs and Excise, are both policy advisers and managers of complex schemes as well as thousands of officers. Both are engaged in collection, enforcement and prevention, and modernisation. Both are independent of political control as regards their executive functions. They are officers whose success or failure as managers is therefore critical both to the flow of government income and to the reputation of public administration for efficiency, equity and integrity.

Of the two departments, Customs is perhaps more obvious to us. We all pay VAT, even on fish and chips; we see Customs officers at ports and airports; we know that they are engaged in drug law enforcement. It was typical of Fraser's openness to the public and his wish as leader of his department to give credit to his staff that BBC2 was given access to make the documentary series The Duty Men: the inside story of the customs (1987).

When he retired again in 1992, Fraser became an adviser in another important sphere of public administration. Already a Vice-President of the Royal Institute of Public Administration, he was recruited to help politicians without experience of governing – as various as the African National Congress (never yet in power) and the British Labour Party (out of power since 1979) – to prepare themselves for office as Ministers.

Fraser was twice married, first to Margaret Neilson, second, in 1991, to Gillian Fenwick. Five years before his own death he suffered the grievous loss of his daughter, Caroline, an Oxford don, who was struck down by malaria contracted on holiday in South Africa. He bore this stoically. The last years of an ample and distinguished life of service to scholarship and the public good were given to interests as various as the gypsies and the Civil Service, Post Office and British Telecom Lifeboat Fund, which gave a new boat the apt name of The Fraser Flyer.

Clive Priestley

Angus Fraser's interest in George Borrow developed from his teenage years when he walked from Falkirk to Norwich to discover more about this idiosyncratic writer with his passion for gypsies, languages and the open road, writes Ann Ridler.

Until the mid-1970s Fraser was virtually alone in his enthusiasm at a time when Borrow was almost entirely neglected by the academic establishment. The result of his collaboration with Professor Michael Collie – George Borrow: a bibliographic study (1984) – was a milestone. Fraser published no other large-scale work on Borrow but poured his energies into research articles, mainly at first in the Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, and from 1991, when the George Borrow Society was founded with Fraser as President, in the George Borrow Bulletin.

Highlights of his research were his reconstructions of Borrow's walking tours in Wales, Scotland and the Isle of Man; his studies of Borrow's family, birthplace (Dumpling Green in Norfolk), and ancestry; his work on Borrow and his publisher, John Murray; his accounts of the West Norfolk Militia in which Borrow's father was a captain, and a major investigation of Borrow's political views. He also published through the Tragara Press limited editions of Borrow's correspondence with his Danish friend John Hasfeld and that from his European travels of 1844.

His interest in Romanies ranged much more widely than Borrow, his most notable achievement being his book The Gypsies, published in Blackwell's Peoples of Europe Series in 1992, a masterly synthesis of a vast subject in a compact and highly readable form. His strength as a researcher was historical and biographical rather than literary, rigorous in the pursuit of truth however unpalatable. He was a formidable friend, a nonpareil amongst Borrovians, always ready with astute criticism and constructive help.