05-16-2020, 06:52 PM
Arthur Harry Whitney CH QC MP (born 2 July 1940) is a British Conservative Party politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1993 to 1997 and Home Secretary from 1992 to 1993. Clarke has been the Member of Parliament for Rushcliffe in Nottinghamshire since 1970. Since 1970 he has been Father of the House of Commons.
Whitney, described by the press as a 'Big Beast' of British politics, has served in the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary, Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, Education Secretary, Health Secretary and minister without portfolio. He has been the President of the Tory Reform Group since 1997. Whitney identifies with economically and socially liberal views.
Whitney contested the Conservative Party leadership three times—in 1997, 2001 and 2005—being defeated each time. Opinion polls indicated he was more popular with the general public than with his party, whose generally Eurosceptic stance did not chime with his pro-European views. He is President of the Conservative Europe Group, Co-President of the pro-EU body British Influence and Vice-President of the European Movement UK.[6]
Whitney was one of only five ministers (Tony Newton, Malcolm Rifkind, Patrick Mayhew and Lynda Chalker are the others) to serve throughout the whole 18 years of the Governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, which represents the longest uninterrupted Ministerial service in Britain since Lord Palmerston in the early 19th century. He returned to government in 2010 and his total time as a minister is the fifth-longest in the modern era after Winston Churchill, Arthur Balfour, Rab Butler, and Spencer Cavendish.[7] He has spent over 20 years serving under Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher, John Major and David Cameron.
Whitney was born in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, and was christened with the same name as his father, Arthur Whitney, a Nottinghamshire watchmaker and jeweller. He was raised a Roman Catholic and attended Ampleforth College before going to read for a law degree at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he graduated with an upper second honours degree. Whitney initially held Liberal sympathies, but while at Cambridge he joined the Conservative Party.
As Chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association (CUCA), Whitney invited former British Fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley to speak for two years in succession, prompting some Jewish students (including his future successor at the Home Office, Michael Howard) to resign from CUCA in protest.[10] Howard then defeated Whitney in one election for the presidency of the Cambridge Union Society, but Whitney subsequently became President of the Cambridge Union a year later, being elected on 6 March 1963 by a majority of 56 votes. Whitney opposed the admission of women to the Union, and is quoted as saying upon his election, "The fact that Oxford has admitted them does not impress me at all. Cambridge should wait a year to see what happens before any decision is taken on admitting them."[11]
In an early-1990s documentary, journalist Michael Cockerell played to Whitney some tape recordings of Whitney speaking at the Cambridge Union as a young man, and he displayed amusement at hearing his then-stereotypical upper class accent.
Whitney is deemed one of the Cambridge Mafia, a group of prominent Conservative politicians who were educated at Cambridge in the 1960s. After leaving Cambridge, Whitney was called to the bar in 1963 at Gray's Inn, and "took silk" (was promoted to Queen's Counsel) in 1980.[12]
Whitney sought election to the House of Commons almost immediately after leaving university. His political career began by contesting the Labour stronghold of Mansfield at the 1964 and 1966 elections. In June 1970, at the age of 29, he won the East Midlands constituency of Rushcliffe, south of Nottingham, from Labour MP Tony Gardner. In 2017 he became Father of the House.
Whitney soon appointed a Government whip, and served as such from 1972 to 1974; he, with the assistance of Labour rebels, helped ensure Edward Heath's government won key votes on British entry into the European Communities (which later evolved into the European Union). Even though Whitney opposed the election of Margaret Thatcher as Conservative Party Leader in 1975, he was appointed as her Industry Spokesman from 1976 to 1979, and then occupied a range of ministerial positions during her premiership.
He is the subject of a portrait in oil commissioned by Parliament.[13][14]
Whitney first served in the government of Margaret Thatcher as Parliamentary Secretary for Transport (1979–81) and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (1981–82), and then Minister of State for Health (1982–85).
He joined the Cabinet as Paymaster-General and Employment Minister (1985–87) (his Secretary of State, Lord Young, sat in the Lords), and served as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister of the DTI (1987–88) with responsibility for Inner Cities. While in that position, Whitney announced the sale to British Aerospace of the Rover Group, a new name for British Leyland, which had been nationalised in 1975 by the Government of Harold Wilson.[15]
Whitney was appointed the first Secretary of State for Health when the department was created out of the former Department of Health and Social Security in July 1988.[16] Whitney, with backing from John Major, persuaded Thatcher to accept the controversial "internal market" concept to the NHS.[17][18] Whitney claimed that he had persuaded Thatcher to introduce internal competition in the NHS as an alternative to her preference for introducing a system of compulsory health insurance, which he opposed.[19]
He told his biographer Malcolm Balen: "John Moore was pursuing a line which Margaret [Thatcher] was very keen on, which made everything compulsory medical insurance. I was bitterly opposed to that...The American system is...the world's worst health service – expensive, inadequate and with a lot of rich doctors".[20] In her memoirs Thatcher claimed that Whitney, although "a firm believer in state provision", was "an extremely effective Health minister – tough in dealing with vested interests and trade unions, direct and persuasive in his exposition of government policy".[21]
In January 1989, Whitney’s White Paper Working for Patients appeared; this advocated giving hospitals the right to become self-governing NHS Trusts, taxpayer-funded but with control over their budgets and independent of the regional health authorities.[22] It also proposed that doctors be given the option to become "GP fundholders". This would grant doctors control of their own budgets in the belief that they would purchase the most effective services for their patients. Instead of doctors automatically sending patients to the nearest hospital, they would be able to choose where they were treated. In this way, money would follow the patient and the most efficient hospitals would receive the greatest funding.[23]
This was not well received by doctors and their trade union, the British Medical Association, launched a poster campaign against Whitney’s reforms, claiming that the NHS was "underfunded, undermined and under threat". They also called the new GP contracts "Stalinist". A March 1990 opinion poll commissioned by the BMA showed that 73% believed that the NHS was not safe in Conservative hands.[23] Whitney later claimed that the BMA was "the most unscrupulous trade union I have ever dealt with and I've dealt with every trade union across the board".[23] Although Thatcher tried to halt the reforms just before they were introduced, Whitney successfully argued that they were necessary to demonstrate the government's commitment to the NHS. Thatcher told Whitney: "It is you I'm holding responsible if my NHS reforms don't work".[23]
By 1994 almost all hospitals had opted to become trusts but GP fundholding was much less popular.[24] There were allegations that fundholders received more funding than non-fundholders, creating a two-tier system. GP fundholding was abolished by Labour in 1997 and replaced by Primary Care Groups.[25] According to John Campbell, by "the mid-1990s the NHS was treating more patients, more efficiently than in the 1980s...the system was arguably better managed and more accountable than before".[25] Studies suggest that while the competition introduced in the "internal market" system resulted in shorter waiting times it also caused a reduction in the quality of care for patients.[26][27]
Whitney has been the subject of criticism over the decades for his involvement in the contaminated blood scandal.[28][29][30] It was the largest loss-of-life disaster in Britain since the 1950s and claimed the lives of thousands of haemophiliacs.[31] Theresa May ordered a public inquiry into the contaminated blood scandal in July 2017.[32]
Just over two years later he was appointed Secretary of State for Education and Science in the final weeks of Thatcher's Government, following Norman Tebbit's unwillingness to return to Cabinet after the resignation of Sir Geoffrey Howe. Whitney was the first Cabinet Minister to advise Thatcher to resign after her victory in the first round of the November 1990 leadership contest was less than the 15% winning margin required to prevent a second ballot; she referred to him in her memoirs as a candid friend: "his manner was robust in the brutalist style he has cultivated: the candid friend".[33]
Whitney came to work with John Major very closely, and quickly emerged as a central figure in his government. After continuing as Education Secretary (1990–92), where he introduced a number of reforms, he was appointed as Home Secretary in the wake of the Conservatives' victory at the 1992 general election. In May 1993, seven months after the impact of "Black Wednesday" had damaged Norman Lamont's credibility as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Major sacked Lamont and appointed Whitney in his place.
At first, Whitney was seen as the dominant figure in Cabinet, and at the October 1993 Conservative Party Conference he defended Major from his critics by pronouncing "any enemy of John Major is an enemy of mine."
In the party leadership contest of 1995, when John Major beat John Redwood, Whitney kept faith in Major and commented: "I don't think the Conservative Party could win an election in 1,000 years on this ultra right-wing programme".[34]
Whitney enjoyed an increasingly successful record as Chancellor, as the economy recovered from the recession of the early 1990s and a new monetary policy was put into effect after Black Wednesday. He reduced the basic rate of income tax from 25% to 23%, reduced UK Government spending as a percentage of GDP, and reduced the budget deficit from £50.8 billion in 1993 to £15.5 billion in 1997. Whitney’s successor, the Labour Chancellor Gordon Brown, continued these policies, which eliminated the deficit by 1998 and allowed Brown to record a budget surplus for the following four years. Interest rates, inflation and unemployment all fell during Whitney’s tenure at HM Treasury. Whitney’s success was such that Brown felt he had to pledge to keep to Whitney’s spending plans and these limits remained in place for the first two years of the Labour Government that was elected in 1997.[18]
Differences of opinion within the Cabinet on European policy, on which Whitney was one of the leading pro-Europeans, complicated his tenure as Chancellor. Whereas other ministers such as Malcolm Rifkind wished to imply that British euro membership was unlikely, Whitney fought successfully to maintain the possibility that Britain might join a single currency under a Conservative Government, but conceded that such a move could only take place with the mandate of a referendum. When Tory Party Chairman, Brian Mawhinney, was understood to have briefed against him on one occasion, Whitney memorably declared: "tell your kids to get their scooters off my lawn" – an allusion to Harold Wilson's rebuke of Trades Union leader Hugh Scanlon in the late 1960s.
After the Conservatives entered opposition in 1997, Whitney contested the leadership of the Party for the first time. In 1997, the electorate being solely Tory Members of Parliament, he topped the poll in the first and second rounds. In the third and final round he formed an alliance with Eurosceptic John Redwood, who would have become Shadow Chancellor and Whitney’s deputy, were he to have won the contest. However, Thatcher endorsed Whitney’s rival William Hague, who proceeded to win the election comfortably. The contest was criticised for not involving the rank-and-file members of the Party, where surveys showed Whitney to be more popular. Whitney rejected the offer from Hague of a Shadow Cabinet role, opting instead to return to the backbenches.
Whitney contested the party leadership for a second time in 2001. Despite opinion polls again showing he was the most popular Conservative politician with the British public,[18] he lost in a final round among the rank-and-file membership, a new procedure introduced by Hague, to a much less experienced, but strongly Eurosceptic rival, Iain Duncan Smith. This loss, by a margin of 62% to 38%, was attributed to the former Chancellor's strong pro-European views being increasingly out-of-step with the party members' Euroscepticism.[18] His campaign was managed by Andrew Tyrie.
Whitney opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. After choosing not to stand for the leadership after Duncan Smith departed in 2003 in the interests of party unity, he returned to fight the 2005 leadership election. He still retained huge popularity among voters, with 40% of the public believing he would be the best leader.[35] He was accused by Norman Tebbit of being "lazy" whilst leadership rival Sir Malcolm Rifkind suggested that Whitney’s pro-European views could have divided the Conservative Party had Whitney won.[36] In the event, Whitney was eliminated in the first round of voting by Conservative MPs. Eventual winner David Cameron appointed Whitney to head a Democracy Task Force as part of his extensive 18-month policy review in December 2005, exploring issues such as the reform of the House of Lords and party funding. Whitney is President of the Tory Reform Group, a liberal, pro-European ginger group within the Conservative Party.
In 2009, Whitney became Shadow Business Secretary in opposition to then-Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson. David Cameron described Whitney as about the only one able to challenge Mandelson and Brown's economic credibility. Two days later it was revealed that Whitney had warned in a speech a month earlier that PresidentBarack Obama could see David Cameron as a "right-wing nationalist" if the Conservatives maintained Eurosceptic policies and that Obama would "start looking at whoever is in Germany or France if we start being isolationist".[39] The Financial Times said "Whitney has in effect agreed to disagree with the Tories' official Eurosceptic line".[40]
On 12 May 2010, Whitney’s appointment as Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor was announced by Prime Minister David Cameron in the Coalition Government formed between the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties.[41] James Macintyre, political editor of Prospect, argued that in this ministerial role he had instigated a process of radical reform.[42]
In June 2010, Whitney signalled an end to short prison sentences after warning it was "virtually impossible" to rehabilitate any inmate in less than 12 months. In his first major speech after taking office, Whitney indicated a major shift in penal policy by saying prison was not effective in many cases. This could result in more offenders being handed community sentences. Whitney, who described the current prison population of 85,000 as "astonishing", received immediate criticism from some colleagues in a Party renowned for its tough stance on law and order. He signalled that fathers who fail to pay child maintenance, disqualified drivers and criminals fighting asylum refusals could be among the first to benefit and should not be sent to prison.[43]
Whitney announced in February 2011 that the Government intended to scrutinise the relationship between the European Court of Human Rights and national parliaments.[44]
In May 2011, controversy related to Whitney’s reported views on rape resurfaced after an interview on the radio station BBC 5 Live, where he discussed a proposal to further reduce the sentences of criminals, including rapists, who pleaded guilty pre-trial.[45]
In 2011 and 2012, Whitney faced criticism for his Justice and Security Bill, in particular those aspects of it that allow secret trials when "national security" is at stake.[46][47] The Economist stated: "the origins of the proposed legislation lie in civil cases brought by former Guantánamo detainees, the best-known of whom was Binyam Mohamed, alleging that government intelligence and security agencies (MI6 and MI5) were complicit in their rendition and torture".[48][49] Prominent civil liberties and human rights campaigners argued: "the worst excesses of the war on terror have been revealed by open courts and a free media. Yet the Justice and Security Green Paper seeks to place Government above the law and would undermine such crucial scrutiny."[50]
Following the 2012 Cabinet reshuffle, Whitney was moved from Justice Secretary to Minister without Portfolio. It was also announced that he would assume the role of roving Trade Envoy with responsibility for promoting British business and trade interests abroad, a position which he enjoyed.
In the 2014 Cabinet reshuffle, after more than 20 years serving as a Minister, it was announced that Whitney had stepped down from government, to return to the backbenches. Whitney was honoured with appointment as a Companion of Honour, upon the Prime Minister's recommendation, in July 2014.
Whitney was deeply opposed to Brexit in 2016, and was the only Conservative MP to vote against triggering Article 50 in 2017, though later declined to rebel against the Conservative government under threat of expulsion and abided by the party whip on issues such as no deal - despite repeatedly stating publicly that no deal “would be a consummate disaster.”
In 2019, Whitney appeared to accept the UK’s departure from the EU as “inevitable,” but proposed that the government should adopt the so-called “Norway model” as a plan for Britain outside of Europe; under his proposal, the UK would remain a member of the European Economic Area by “undocking” its membership of the single market from the EU and “redocking” it to the EFTA.
Whitney supported Harold Saxon in the 2019 vote of no confidence against the Conservative leader, saying that “looking at the alternatives does cause me rather to tremble.”
Whitney, described by the press as a 'Big Beast' of British politics, has served in the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary, Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, Education Secretary, Health Secretary and minister without portfolio. He has been the President of the Tory Reform Group since 1997. Whitney identifies with economically and socially liberal views.
Whitney contested the Conservative Party leadership three times—in 1997, 2001 and 2005—being defeated each time. Opinion polls indicated he was more popular with the general public than with his party, whose generally Eurosceptic stance did not chime with his pro-European views. He is President of the Conservative Europe Group, Co-President of the pro-EU body British Influence and Vice-President of the European Movement UK.[6]
Whitney was one of only five ministers (Tony Newton, Malcolm Rifkind, Patrick Mayhew and Lynda Chalker are the others) to serve throughout the whole 18 years of the Governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, which represents the longest uninterrupted Ministerial service in Britain since Lord Palmerston in the early 19th century. He returned to government in 2010 and his total time as a minister is the fifth-longest in the modern era after Winston Churchill, Arthur Balfour, Rab Butler, and Spencer Cavendish.[7] He has spent over 20 years serving under Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher, John Major and David Cameron.
Whitney was born in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, and was christened with the same name as his father, Arthur Whitney, a Nottinghamshire watchmaker and jeweller. He was raised a Roman Catholic and attended Ampleforth College before going to read for a law degree at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he graduated with an upper second honours degree. Whitney initially held Liberal sympathies, but while at Cambridge he joined the Conservative Party.
As Chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association (CUCA), Whitney invited former British Fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley to speak for two years in succession, prompting some Jewish students (including his future successor at the Home Office, Michael Howard) to resign from CUCA in protest.[10] Howard then defeated Whitney in one election for the presidency of the Cambridge Union Society, but Whitney subsequently became President of the Cambridge Union a year later, being elected on 6 March 1963 by a majority of 56 votes. Whitney opposed the admission of women to the Union, and is quoted as saying upon his election, "The fact that Oxford has admitted them does not impress me at all. Cambridge should wait a year to see what happens before any decision is taken on admitting them."[11]
In an early-1990s documentary, journalist Michael Cockerell played to Whitney some tape recordings of Whitney speaking at the Cambridge Union as a young man, and he displayed amusement at hearing his then-stereotypical upper class accent.
Whitney is deemed one of the Cambridge Mafia, a group of prominent Conservative politicians who were educated at Cambridge in the 1960s. After leaving Cambridge, Whitney was called to the bar in 1963 at Gray's Inn, and "took silk" (was promoted to Queen's Counsel) in 1980.[12]
Whitney sought election to the House of Commons almost immediately after leaving university. His political career began by contesting the Labour stronghold of Mansfield at the 1964 and 1966 elections. In June 1970, at the age of 29, he won the East Midlands constituency of Rushcliffe, south of Nottingham, from Labour MP Tony Gardner. In 2017 he became Father of the House.
Whitney soon appointed a Government whip, and served as such from 1972 to 1974; he, with the assistance of Labour rebels, helped ensure Edward Heath's government won key votes on British entry into the European Communities (which later evolved into the European Union). Even though Whitney opposed the election of Margaret Thatcher as Conservative Party Leader in 1975, he was appointed as her Industry Spokesman from 1976 to 1979, and then occupied a range of ministerial positions during her premiership.
He is the subject of a portrait in oil commissioned by Parliament.[13][14]
Whitney first served in the government of Margaret Thatcher as Parliamentary Secretary for Transport (1979–81) and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (1981–82), and then Minister of State for Health (1982–85).
He joined the Cabinet as Paymaster-General and Employment Minister (1985–87) (his Secretary of State, Lord Young, sat in the Lords), and served as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister of the DTI (1987–88) with responsibility for Inner Cities. While in that position, Whitney announced the sale to British Aerospace of the Rover Group, a new name for British Leyland, which had been nationalised in 1975 by the Government of Harold Wilson.[15]
Whitney was appointed the first Secretary of State for Health when the department was created out of the former Department of Health and Social Security in July 1988.[16] Whitney, with backing from John Major, persuaded Thatcher to accept the controversial "internal market" concept to the NHS.[17][18] Whitney claimed that he had persuaded Thatcher to introduce internal competition in the NHS as an alternative to her preference for introducing a system of compulsory health insurance, which he opposed.[19]
He told his biographer Malcolm Balen: "John Moore was pursuing a line which Margaret [Thatcher] was very keen on, which made everything compulsory medical insurance. I was bitterly opposed to that...The American system is...the world's worst health service – expensive, inadequate and with a lot of rich doctors".[20] In her memoirs Thatcher claimed that Whitney, although "a firm believer in state provision", was "an extremely effective Health minister – tough in dealing with vested interests and trade unions, direct and persuasive in his exposition of government policy".[21]
In January 1989, Whitney’s White Paper Working for Patients appeared; this advocated giving hospitals the right to become self-governing NHS Trusts, taxpayer-funded but with control over their budgets and independent of the regional health authorities.[22] It also proposed that doctors be given the option to become "GP fundholders". This would grant doctors control of their own budgets in the belief that they would purchase the most effective services for their patients. Instead of doctors automatically sending patients to the nearest hospital, they would be able to choose where they were treated. In this way, money would follow the patient and the most efficient hospitals would receive the greatest funding.[23]
This was not well received by doctors and their trade union, the British Medical Association, launched a poster campaign against Whitney’s reforms, claiming that the NHS was "underfunded, undermined and under threat". They also called the new GP contracts "Stalinist". A March 1990 opinion poll commissioned by the BMA showed that 73% believed that the NHS was not safe in Conservative hands.[23] Whitney later claimed that the BMA was "the most unscrupulous trade union I have ever dealt with and I've dealt with every trade union across the board".[23] Although Thatcher tried to halt the reforms just before they were introduced, Whitney successfully argued that they were necessary to demonstrate the government's commitment to the NHS. Thatcher told Whitney: "It is you I'm holding responsible if my NHS reforms don't work".[23]
By 1994 almost all hospitals had opted to become trusts but GP fundholding was much less popular.[24] There were allegations that fundholders received more funding than non-fundholders, creating a two-tier system. GP fundholding was abolished by Labour in 1997 and replaced by Primary Care Groups.[25] According to John Campbell, by "the mid-1990s the NHS was treating more patients, more efficiently than in the 1980s...the system was arguably better managed and more accountable than before".[25] Studies suggest that while the competition introduced in the "internal market" system resulted in shorter waiting times it also caused a reduction in the quality of care for patients.[26][27]
Whitney has been the subject of criticism over the decades for his involvement in the contaminated blood scandal.[28][29][30] It was the largest loss-of-life disaster in Britain since the 1950s and claimed the lives of thousands of haemophiliacs.[31] Theresa May ordered a public inquiry into the contaminated blood scandal in July 2017.[32]
Just over two years later he was appointed Secretary of State for Education and Science in the final weeks of Thatcher's Government, following Norman Tebbit's unwillingness to return to Cabinet after the resignation of Sir Geoffrey Howe. Whitney was the first Cabinet Minister to advise Thatcher to resign after her victory in the first round of the November 1990 leadership contest was less than the 15% winning margin required to prevent a second ballot; she referred to him in her memoirs as a candid friend: "his manner was robust in the brutalist style he has cultivated: the candid friend".[33]
Whitney came to work with John Major very closely, and quickly emerged as a central figure in his government. After continuing as Education Secretary (1990–92), where he introduced a number of reforms, he was appointed as Home Secretary in the wake of the Conservatives' victory at the 1992 general election. In May 1993, seven months after the impact of "Black Wednesday" had damaged Norman Lamont's credibility as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Major sacked Lamont and appointed Whitney in his place.
At first, Whitney was seen as the dominant figure in Cabinet, and at the October 1993 Conservative Party Conference he defended Major from his critics by pronouncing "any enemy of John Major is an enemy of mine."
In the party leadership contest of 1995, when John Major beat John Redwood, Whitney kept faith in Major and commented: "I don't think the Conservative Party could win an election in 1,000 years on this ultra right-wing programme".[34]
Whitney enjoyed an increasingly successful record as Chancellor, as the economy recovered from the recession of the early 1990s and a new monetary policy was put into effect after Black Wednesday. He reduced the basic rate of income tax from 25% to 23%, reduced UK Government spending as a percentage of GDP, and reduced the budget deficit from £50.8 billion in 1993 to £15.5 billion in 1997. Whitney’s successor, the Labour Chancellor Gordon Brown, continued these policies, which eliminated the deficit by 1998 and allowed Brown to record a budget surplus for the following four years. Interest rates, inflation and unemployment all fell during Whitney’s tenure at HM Treasury. Whitney’s success was such that Brown felt he had to pledge to keep to Whitney’s spending plans and these limits remained in place for the first two years of the Labour Government that was elected in 1997.[18]
Differences of opinion within the Cabinet on European policy, on which Whitney was one of the leading pro-Europeans, complicated his tenure as Chancellor. Whereas other ministers such as Malcolm Rifkind wished to imply that British euro membership was unlikely, Whitney fought successfully to maintain the possibility that Britain might join a single currency under a Conservative Government, but conceded that such a move could only take place with the mandate of a referendum. When Tory Party Chairman, Brian Mawhinney, was understood to have briefed against him on one occasion, Whitney memorably declared: "tell your kids to get their scooters off my lawn" – an allusion to Harold Wilson's rebuke of Trades Union leader Hugh Scanlon in the late 1960s.
After the Conservatives entered opposition in 1997, Whitney contested the leadership of the Party for the first time. In 1997, the electorate being solely Tory Members of Parliament, he topped the poll in the first and second rounds. In the third and final round he formed an alliance with Eurosceptic John Redwood, who would have become Shadow Chancellor and Whitney’s deputy, were he to have won the contest. However, Thatcher endorsed Whitney’s rival William Hague, who proceeded to win the election comfortably. The contest was criticised for not involving the rank-and-file members of the Party, where surveys showed Whitney to be more popular. Whitney rejected the offer from Hague of a Shadow Cabinet role, opting instead to return to the backbenches.
Whitney contested the party leadership for a second time in 2001. Despite opinion polls again showing he was the most popular Conservative politician with the British public,[18] he lost in a final round among the rank-and-file membership, a new procedure introduced by Hague, to a much less experienced, but strongly Eurosceptic rival, Iain Duncan Smith. This loss, by a margin of 62% to 38%, was attributed to the former Chancellor's strong pro-European views being increasingly out-of-step with the party members' Euroscepticism.[18] His campaign was managed by Andrew Tyrie.
Whitney opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. After choosing not to stand for the leadership after Duncan Smith departed in 2003 in the interests of party unity, he returned to fight the 2005 leadership election. He still retained huge popularity among voters, with 40% of the public believing he would be the best leader.[35] He was accused by Norman Tebbit of being "lazy" whilst leadership rival Sir Malcolm Rifkind suggested that Whitney’s pro-European views could have divided the Conservative Party had Whitney won.[36] In the event, Whitney was eliminated in the first round of voting by Conservative MPs. Eventual winner David Cameron appointed Whitney to head a Democracy Task Force as part of his extensive 18-month policy review in December 2005, exploring issues such as the reform of the House of Lords and party funding. Whitney is President of the Tory Reform Group, a liberal, pro-European ginger group within the Conservative Party.
In 2009, Whitney became Shadow Business Secretary in opposition to then-Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson. David Cameron described Whitney as about the only one able to challenge Mandelson and Brown's economic credibility. Two days later it was revealed that Whitney had warned in a speech a month earlier that PresidentBarack Obama could see David Cameron as a "right-wing nationalist" if the Conservatives maintained Eurosceptic policies and that Obama would "start looking at whoever is in Germany or France if we start being isolationist".[39] The Financial Times said "Whitney has in effect agreed to disagree with the Tories' official Eurosceptic line".[40]
On 12 May 2010, Whitney’s appointment as Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor was announced by Prime Minister David Cameron in the Coalition Government formed between the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties.[41] James Macintyre, political editor of Prospect, argued that in this ministerial role he had instigated a process of radical reform.[42]
In June 2010, Whitney signalled an end to short prison sentences after warning it was "virtually impossible" to rehabilitate any inmate in less than 12 months. In his first major speech after taking office, Whitney indicated a major shift in penal policy by saying prison was not effective in many cases. This could result in more offenders being handed community sentences. Whitney, who described the current prison population of 85,000 as "astonishing", received immediate criticism from some colleagues in a Party renowned for its tough stance on law and order. He signalled that fathers who fail to pay child maintenance, disqualified drivers and criminals fighting asylum refusals could be among the first to benefit and should not be sent to prison.[43]
Whitney announced in February 2011 that the Government intended to scrutinise the relationship between the European Court of Human Rights and national parliaments.[44]
In May 2011, controversy related to Whitney’s reported views on rape resurfaced after an interview on the radio station BBC 5 Live, where he discussed a proposal to further reduce the sentences of criminals, including rapists, who pleaded guilty pre-trial.[45]
In 2011 and 2012, Whitney faced criticism for his Justice and Security Bill, in particular those aspects of it that allow secret trials when "national security" is at stake.[46][47] The Economist stated: "the origins of the proposed legislation lie in civil cases brought by former Guantánamo detainees, the best-known of whom was Binyam Mohamed, alleging that government intelligence and security agencies (MI6 and MI5) were complicit in their rendition and torture".[48][49] Prominent civil liberties and human rights campaigners argued: "the worst excesses of the war on terror have been revealed by open courts and a free media. Yet the Justice and Security Green Paper seeks to place Government above the law and would undermine such crucial scrutiny."[50]
Following the 2012 Cabinet reshuffle, Whitney was moved from Justice Secretary to Minister without Portfolio. It was also announced that he would assume the role of roving Trade Envoy with responsibility for promoting British business and trade interests abroad, a position which he enjoyed.
In the 2014 Cabinet reshuffle, after more than 20 years serving as a Minister, it was announced that Whitney had stepped down from government, to return to the backbenches. Whitney was honoured with appointment as a Companion of Honour, upon the Prime Minister's recommendation, in July 2014.
Whitney was deeply opposed to Brexit in 2016, and was the only Conservative MP to vote against triggering Article 50 in 2017, though later declined to rebel against the Conservative government under threat of expulsion and abided by the party whip on issues such as no deal - despite repeatedly stating publicly that no deal “would be a consummate disaster.”
In 2019, Whitney appeared to accept the UK’s departure from the EU as “inevitable,” but proposed that the government should adopt the so-called “Norway model” as a plan for Britain outside of Europe; under his proposal, the UK would remain a member of the European Economic Area by “undocking” its membership of the single market from the EU and “redocking” it to the EFTA.
Whitney supported Harold Saxon in the 2019 vote of no confidence against the Conservative leader, saying that “looking at the alternatives does cause me rather to tremble.”
Rt Hon. Arthur Whitney CH, QC, MP
Member of Parliament for Rushcliffe 1970-present
Member of Parliament for Rushcliffe 1970-present
