Norman Lamont

Infobox Politician


honorific-prefix = The Right Honourable
name = Norman Lamont
honorific-suffix =
Baron Lamont of Lerwick, PC
birth_date = birth date and age|df=yes|1942|05|08
birth_place = Shetland, Scotland, UK
office = Chancellor of the Exchequer
primeminister = John Major
term_start = 28 November 1990
term_end = 27 May 1993
predecessor = John Major
successor = Kenneth Clarke
office2 = Chief Secretary to the Treasury
primeminister2 = Margaret Thatcher
term_start2 =24 July 1989
term_end2 =28 November 1990
predecessor2 = John Major
successor2 =David Mellor
office3 = Financial Secretary to the Treasury
term_start3 =22 January 1986
term_end3 =24 July 1989
predecessor3 = John Moore
successor3 =Peter Lilley
party = Conservatives

Norman Stewart Hughson Lamont, Baron Lamont of Lerwick, PC (born 8 May 1942) is a former Conservative MP for Kingston-upon-Thames, England. He is best-known for his period serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer, from 1990 until 1993. He was created a life peer in 1998.

Early life

Lamont was born in the Shetland Islands and was educated at Loretto School, Musselburgh, Scotland and Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where he was Chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association and President of the Cambridge Union Society in 1964. He also took part in the English-Speaking Union's Tour of the United States of America.

At Cambridge he was a contemporary of Michael Howard, Kenneth Clarke, Leon Brittan, and John Gummer all of whom became leading figures of the Conservative Party.

Corporate career

Before entering Parliament he worked for N M Rothschild & Sons, the financial services firm, and became director of Rothschild Asset Management. [ [http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/jul/22/conservativeparty.politics Mr Lamont's dark history] ]

Lamont currently, in addition to his role as a working peer, is a director of and a consultant to various companies in the financial sector. He is a director of the hedge fund company RAB Capital, Scottish Re (a re-investment company quoted on the New York Stock Exchange), Balli Group plc (commodities trading house), and he is an advisor to Rotch Property Group. He is also Chairman of the East European Food Fund and a director of a number of investment funds.

Member of Parliament

Lamont stood as a candidate for Member of Parliament in the June 1970 General Election for Hull East. He was defeated by John Prescott who would go on to become Tony Blair's Deputy Prime Minister. Two years later, on 4 May 1972 he won a by-election to become MP for Kingston upon Thames.

In government

Lamont served in successive governments under Margaret Thatcher and John Major for a total of 14 years, in the Departments of Energy, Industry, Defence and the Treasury. He was Financial Secretary to the Treasury, then Chief Secretary to the Treasury (succeeding John Major in the latter job on Major's promotion to Foreign Secretary in July 1989) under Chancellor Nigel Lawson, whom he tried unsuccessfully to persuade not to resign from the government on the morning of 26 October 1989 - Lawson resigned that evening. Lamont remained as Chief Secretary to the Treasury under Major's Chancellorship. In this position he acquiesced in Major's decision to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) at a central parity of 2.95 Deutschmarks to the Pound. Shortly afterwards he successfully managed Major's election campaign to succeed Margaret Thatcher as party leader and Prime Minister. In the process he clashed angrily in private with Nigel Lawson who preferred Michael Heseltine as Thatcher's successor, phoning Lawson up to remind him of his caustic remarks made about Heseltine's economic policies. Lamont eventually slammed the phone down on Lawson in temper.

On 16 May 1991, he stated in parliament that "Rising unemployment and the recession have been the price that we have had to pay to get inflation down. That price is well worth paying" [ [http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199091/cmhansrd/1991-05-16/Orals-1.html Hansard] ] The remark is regularly, if not approvingly, recalled by commentators and other politicians.

Chancellor of the Exchequer

Lamont replaced Major as Chancellor in Major's new Cabinet, thereby finalising his commitment to Major's exchange rate policy. Lamont claimed that the recession would be "short-lived and relatively shallow" and later that "the green shoots of recovery" could be seen all around - early in 1992 one of the Sunday newspapers ran a "Green Shoots Index" of signs of recovery, only to have to drop it when few such signs could be found. Despite the Conservatives' surprise victory in the April 1992 general election the ERM policy proved unsustainable and collapsed on Black Wednesday, when Lamont was forced to withdraw the pound from the ERM despite assuring the public that he would not do so just a week earlier. He faced fierce criticism at the time for his apparent insouciance in the face of the collapse of the stated central plank of his economic policy; sources friendly to Lamont told the newspapers that he was singing in the bath with happiness at leaving the ERM. After Major left office and published his memoirs, Lamont publicly denied Major's version of events, claiming that Major had effectively opted out of his responsibilities and left Lamont to carry the can for that day's actions.

During the autumn of 1992 Lamont became a national laughing-stock, over a string of press stories: that he had not paid his hotel bill for "champagne and large breakfasts" from the Conservative Party Conference (in fact his bill had been forwarded on for settlement); that he was in arrears on his personal credit card bill (true); that he had used taxpayers' money to evict a "sex therapist" called "Miss Whiplash" in June 1991, from a flat he owned (true, but it had been formally approved to allow him to obtain expedited legal proceedings; there was never any suggestion beyond innuendo that he had ever met his tenant, let alone personally made use of her services); and that he had called at a newsagent in a seedy area of Paddington late at night to purchase champagne and expensive "Raffles" cigarettes. The last story in particular turned out to have been entirely invented.

Dismissal

During the Newbury by-election in May 1993, Lamont was asked at a press conference whether he most regretted claiming to see "the green shoots of recovery" or "singing in his bath". He replied by quoting the Edith Piaf song "Je ne regrette rien", a dry response which raised a laugh at the press conference but which played poorly when quoted later on the television that evening and afterwards. When called to defend him on "Newsnight" his friend the former Labour MP Woodrow Wyatt caused further merriment by claiming that Lamont could do an excellent impersonation of a Scops-owl.

Three weeks after the government's massive loss in the by-election, on 27 May 1993, Lamont was sacked, (declining a demotion to become Secretary of State for the Environment), throwing (by his own account) Major's letter of regret at his departure unopened into the wastepaper basket, and giving a resignation speech in the House of Commons on 9 June, that made clear his feeling that he had been unfairly treated, saying that the government 'gives the impression of being in office but not in power'; the then Party Chairman Norman Fowler dismissed the speech as "dud, nasty, ludicrous and silly". Major and Lamont agree that Lamont had offered his resignation immediately after Black Wednesday and that Major pressed him to remain in office. Lamont came to the view that Major had sought his survival in office as a firebreak against the criticism of the ERM policy rebounding on himself.

Lamont appeared on the 1993 British Comedy Awards to give an award, resulting in hissing from the audience. In December 1993 the comedian Julian Clary joked to host Jonathan Ross "I've just been fisting Norman Lamont. Talk about a red box". This comment was well received by the audience but, despite Ross's attempt to make light of the remark by asking how Clary had "clawed his way to the front of the queue", it led to Clary's career taking a downturn.

In the following years Lamont became a fierce critic of the Major government. He is now regarded as a staunch euro-sceptic. In March 1995 he voted with the Labour party in a vote on Europe, and later that year he authored "Sovereign Britain" in which he envisaged Britain's withdrawal from the European Union, and was talked of as a potential leadership challenger to John Major; in the event it was John Redwood who challenged for the leadership. Lamont acted as Redwood's campaign manager instead. He is the current vice president of the euro-sceptic Bruges Group.

Despite departing under a cloud, Lamont defends his budget record to this day. The 1991 budget, in which he seized the opportunity presented by Mrs Thatcher's resignation to restrict mortgage interest tax relief to the basic rate of income tax and also cut the rate of corporation tax by two percentage points, was greeted by positive coverage in "The Economist" which dubbed him a "Nimble Novice". In the 1992 budget his proposal to advance to a 20% basic rate of income tax through a combination of a narrow initial band, a cut in tax on deposit interest and curtailment of tax allowances was hailed as an elegant way of combining populism with progressivism, though events were later to lend support to Nigel Lawson's view that this approach was strategically inept. His final budget in 1993 was more sympathically received by financial specialists than John Major's 1990 budget or Kenneth Clarke's budget of November 1993. Lamont attributes the large public sector borrowing requirement (ie fiscal deficit) of these years to the depth of the recession triggered by his inability to cut interest rates sooner within the ERM.

1997 and beyond

In boundary changes enacted for the 1997 General Election Lamont's constituency of Kingston upon Thames was split up. The northern parts were merged with Richmond and Barnes to form Richmond Park, and the southern parts merged with the larger Surbiton to form Kingston and Surbiton. Lamont lost the contest for the candidacy for the new seat to the incumbent Surbiton MP. He then embarked on a high profile search for a new constituency and was eventually adopted as the Conservative candidate for Harrogate in Yorkshire. The move was seen as an attempt to parachute in an outsider, with Lamont seeming like an opportunist next to Phil Willis, a local teacher, and long-time local politician. When the General Election came his unpopularity and that of the Conservatives in general, a massive tactical voting campaign occurred in the constituency and the Liberal Democrats won the seat. He was not recommended for a peerage in John Major's resignation honours, but was the following year, William Hague recommended him, and Lamont made a peer as Baron Lamont of Lerwick, of Lerwick in the Shetland Islands.

He is currently a director of Scottish Annuity & Life Holdings, a reinsurance firm, and, since 1996, chairman of Le Cercle, a foreign policy club which meets bi-annually in Washington, D.C..

In 1998 the former military dictator of Chile, General Augusto Pinochet visited Britain to obtain medical treatment. This prompted a debate about whether he should be arrested and put on trial over his human rights record. Lamont joined with Margaret Thatcher in defending Pinochet [ [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6167351.stm "Pinochet death 'saddens' Thatcher"] at BBC News Online] , calling him a "good and brave and honourable soldier" [ [http://www.remember-chile.org.uk/comment/apolbrit.htm Remember Chile] ] His stance was highly controversial ["His theme in all his interviews was that Pinochet, who was never elected, was much preferable to Salvador Allende, the prime minister he toppled and killed, who was elected, twice. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,235251,00.html Paul Foot writing in "The Guardian"] ] ["Fifteen months ago, in the wake of Pinochet's arrest, the main chant of Norman Lamont's bizarre chorus was that Chilean democracy was so fragile that an act of justice of this kind would bring it crashing to the ground. [..] Fifteen months on, those opinions seem even more contemptible than they did at the time" [http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,238379,00.html Isabel Hilton in "The Guardian"] ]

In February 2005 it was reported in "The Times" that Lamont and John Major had held up the release of papers concerning Black Wednesday under the Freedom of Information Act. The two wrote to the paper to deny the reports.

In October 2006 he complained that the new party leader David Cameron (Lamont's political adviser around the time of Black Wednesday) lacked policies. [ [http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1885228,00.html "The Guardian"] ]

References

Bibliography

* (autobiography)

External links

* [http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199798/minutes/981019/ldminute.htm Announcement of his introduction at the House of Lords] House of Lords minutes of proceedings, 19 October 1998