Sir Trevor Skeet

Conservative MP denied ministerial office

Academia in Britain has been vastly enriched by the infusion of talent from New Zealand, of whom Ernest Rutherford is only one among the most eminent. In politics, New Zealanders have fared less well.

Trevor Herbert Harry Skeet, politician, lawyer and writer: born Auckland, New Zealand 28 January 1918; called to the Bar, Inner Temple 1947; MP (Conservative) for Willesden East 1959-64, for Bedford 1970-83, for Bedfordshire North 1983-97; Kt 1986; married 1958 Elizabeth Gilling (died 1973; two sons), 1985 Valerie Benson; died Milton Ernest, Bedfordshire 14 August 2004.

Academia in Britain has been vastly enriched by the infusion of talent from New Zealand, of whom Ernest Rutherford is only one among the most eminent. In politics, New Zealanders have fared less well.

Bryan Gould's undoubted talents would have been recognised at an earlier stage had he not had a certain stigma of being from "Down Under". And, I believe, the reason why Trevor Skeet never achieved the ministerial office to which his competence and assiduity surely entitled him, and which he craved, was that his colleagues reacted with, "Why should we give precedence and a plum job to a bloke from Auckland?" Even so, had he held on to his Willesden seat between 1964 and 1970 and not picked up the nasty and unfair tag of "political retread" he would surely have won a government appointment.

Trevor Skeet was born in the Mount Eden district of Auckland in 1918, into a North Island business family. After attending King's College, the leading school in Auckland, he graduated LLB from the University of New Zealand, becoming for a fleeting period a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of New Zealand.

The Second World War altered the direction of Skeet's life. Working his way, as all New Zealanders had to, up through the ranks, he became a sergeant in the Engineers with the New Zealand contingent attached to the Eighth Army in North Africa. He was commissioned into the New Zealand heavy anti-aircraft unit and saw service in the Italian campaign before going back to New Zealand in anticipation of an extended Japanese war.

At the end of hostilities, Skeet had a yearning for Europe which drove him to gain a place at the Inner Temple. Almost on arrival, he became immersed in the Inns of Court Conservative Association. Stoke Newington and Hackney North, looking desperately for a candidate, asked if the Inns of Court could produce any suitable young man. Skeet was suggested and, to widespread astonishment, in 1951 managed to garner 21,369 Conservative votes, albeit against the 37,406 which piled up for Labour's David Weitzman.

After looking around for a winnable seat from his base working for the Commonwealth and Empire Industries Association, Skeet had to make do with another mission impossible assignment. At the last moment he took on Jim Griffiths in the Llanelli division of Carmarthenshire. Not surprisingly there was a gap of over 23,000 votes between them. However Skeet's persistence - persistence was very definitely one of his qualities - got him the nomination in Willesden East. It was a surprise in 1959 that he beat the incumbent Labour MP, Maurice Orbach, who had been MP there since 1945.

In his maiden speech Skeet said:

I think that, ultimately, if we could have slightly more co-operation on the part of the Commonwealth - and I am thinking of certain commodities from countries in Africa - and they could be associated with the European Free Trade Area, considerable progress should be made towards an ultimate solution of economic problems.

I think our bargaining factors will be manifest in this country. It appears to me that, when one deals with the per capita income of the Seven, that is in fact larger than that of the Six. When we take per capita trade of the Scandinavian quartet, which as a customer is second in importance to the USA, the following facts emerge. In fact, the Scandinavians are buying from us at the rate of £15 per head, whereas the United States at present is buying from us at the rate of 35 shillings per head.

This passage encapsulates Skeet's didactic, factual style of speaking. In the early 1960s Skeet was described to me by a not uncharitable Conservative MP, Priscilla Tweedsmuir, as a man who pontificated, and inserted "I think" more times per speech than any other MP she had ever heard. Perhaps this reveals why his colleagues were unwilling to help him advance.

In 1964 Skeet lost his seat to Reg Freeson, who was soon to be a most effective Minister in the middle ranks of the incoming Labour government. However Skeet was rewarded in 1967 by being selected for Bedford. This was a natural Conservative seat which had been lost to a very attractive Labour candidate, Ben Parkyn, by Christopher Soames, who had been Macmillan's Minister of Agriculture but who had to spend a great deal of ministerial time away from the Bedford constituency.

When Skeet returned to the House of Commons he was his same rather raucous and opinionated self. In December 1970, in an era before "props" were commonly displayed on the floor of the House of Commons, Skeet produced a stone which he had found in his own coal in order to support his praise for the purity of gas and oil in contrast to the impurities of coal. He did not improve his relations with the House of Commons by shouting at Harold Wilson, "Take your defeat like a man", and later voicing in very unsympathetic tones the view that the coalminers were overpaid.

Skeet's subsequent Commons career is the story of a man who probably knew more about the details of energy than anyone else among us. He sponsored in April 1974 the controversial Burmah-Total Refineries Trust Bill without warning either the department or his own colleagues, such as Bernard Braine, whose constituencies were intimately involved. In February 1978 he introduced a Bill to establish an independent nuclear waste disposal agency showing a prescience which few others had at that time. Energetically he campaigned against Tony Benn's threatened takeover of North Sea oil in the autumn of 1978 and claimed that state ownership of the oil-fields was unimportant so long as the State had no control of their exploitation.

At the beginning of the 1980s he campaigned to urge the Thatcher government to go ahead with the Pressurised Water Reactor. With other right-wing Conservatives he rebelled (to the Prime Minister's pleasure) to demand that employers affected by illegal secondary action should be compensated with union funds.

Ever the champion of the oil companies, Skeet argued in March 1981 that the 20p tax increase on petrol should be reduced by half. He bitterly complained of delays in financing the gas-gathering pipeline and rebelled against his own party during the passage of Nigel Lawson's Oil and Gas Bill, taking issue with the Energy Secretary's effort to split the British National Oil Corporation in two parts.

He was one of the strongest supporters of the decision to make his friend Ian MacGregor chairman of the National Coal Board in March 1983. Predictably, on account of his antipathy to coal, he supported the strongest measures during the miners' strike.

Skeet led the All-Party Minerals Group delegation, of which he was chairman, to Namibia under the auspices of Rio Tinto Zinc in the autumn of 1984. His report back was, I thought, fascinating and it was one of Skeet's strengths that he took enormous trouble in telling any colleague who would listen what he had learnt on any of his numerous visits. Many politicians are jaunters, with the result that few of their colleagues hear anything about the visits which they have been privileged to make as members of the British parliament. It was to Skeet's considerable credit that he would share his expertise and what he had learnt with any parliamentary colleague who bothered to show the slightest interest. He was among the first to alert us to the very real problems of uranium mining.

At the end of the 1980s Skeet repeatedly asked who would pay compensation in case of accident in privately owned nuclear power stations. He wanted the establishment of an independent grid and he proposed to keep nuclear generation in state hands. It was this kind of activity, rather independent-minded, which in 1989 prompted his Conservative association to threaten to deselect him. Against every expectation, he won a ballot to keep him by 311 votes to 164. This was quite a feat for a man who by that time was over 60 years of age. He only stood down in 1997, aged 79.

Trevor Skeet's most important contribution to the House of Commons was as a most active chairman of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee in 1985-88, and his sustained contribution to that committee. As Secretary for part of the period, I realised that his vigorous chairmanship revealed that he was an effective and extremely knowledgeable Energy Minister manqué.

Tam Dalyell