John Major: The Autobiography. John Major

       CHAPTER FOUR Climbing the Ladder

      IN THE LATE SUMMER OF 1985 I was at home at Finings watching the death throes of the England – Australia Test at The Oval on television. I had hoped to be at the match, but the probability of a reshuffle, and whispers that I would be promoted, kept me by the phone. England’s pace bowler Richard Ellison was mopping up the Australians as I awaited events. Norma was out, and James and Elizabeth were at school, so I was alone. And I had a dilemma.

      I was horrified that I might be offered the job of Minister of Sport. I loved sport and politics, but they were separate parts of my life, and I had no wish to mix them. This was the first of two occasions in my career when I was to wonder whether or not to accept a promotion. I paced the room, and decided that I wanted a job in the mainstream of politics, or no job at all. If the Prime Minister offered me Sport I would say no, and ask to stay in the Whips’ Office. I marshalled my arguments, knowing that she would not welcome such a response.

      The telephone rang. It was Number 10. The Prime Minister wished to speak to me later – would I be around? ‘Yes,’ I said. And waited. And paced. England won the Test match. I continued to wait.

      Finally the phone rang again. It was the Prime Minister. ‘I’d like you to leave the Whips’ Office and go to Social Security,’ she said. ‘It’s where I started. It’s a good place to be. Norman Fowler will be your Secretary of State – get in touch with him straight away. Good luck.’ And that was it. I breathed a sigh of relief. I was a minister, and with a mainstream brief.

      I did not know Norman Fowler well, but he was very welcoming at the department; although much later, when we knew each other far better, he admitted that he had had reservations about my appointment. He feared I was a ‘Whips’ nark’ – put in place to keep tabs on the plans of the biggest-spending department of all. He had good grounds for this suspicion. I learned from officials that not long before I arrived, a garrulous junior minister had passed details of the ministry’s plans for social security reform to Nigel Lawson.

      No reservations were evident in Norman’s welcome to me. From the start, he brought me into the core of the ministry’s work, and we came to be firm friends. I enjoyed the department from the moment I set foot in it. My work as Parliamentary Under Secretary for Social Security was detailed and gruelling, and often very boring, with masses of routine letter-signing. Six or seven red boxes accompanied me home every weekend, and sometimes it took me until Sunday night to get through them all. But it gave me an insight into an area of policy that few people ever master. There was nothing abstract about the portfolio – since it embraced pensions, housing and social security benefits, every policy decision we took directly affected the quality of life of many very vulnerable people.

      Norman Fowler headed the social security side of the department, with Tony Newton immediately below him as the Minister of State, responsible in particular for disabled people. I was junior to Tony. Jean Trumpington, one of the redoubtable characters of Parliament, was our Minister in the House of Lords, covering all aspects of the department’s business.

      I once asked Jean why she had chosen the title ‘Trumpington’. ‘Well, dear,’ she said, ‘as you know, people take a title from places they know well. I knew two villages very well: one was called Trumpington, and the other was Six Mile Bottom. Which one would you have chosen?’ Jean’s humour knew no bounds. The House of Lords loved her. So did we.

      Norman Fowler had the great political gift of worrying away at a complex problem for days on end, to the total exclusion of all else, until the problem was solved. Making few mistakes, he was the epitome of ‘a safe pair of hands’ – although while he was avoiding one catastrophe, other decisions and problems piled up elsewhere that could have officials and junior ministers tearing their hair in frustration. But Norman proved his point. No other secretary of state successfully mastered this massive department – ultimately it was split in two – but he ran it with distinction for over five years. He was a far more formidable operator than many with higher public profiles, and he rarely lost an argument in Cabinet – or outside it.

      Tony Newton, the Minister of State, was a fully-fledged human being with no sense of self at all; his thought was always for others. I once said that if a tramp stole his suit Tony would rush after him with a matching shirt. He saw every problem first from the human angle, although – if persuaded change was necessary – he would take through the most controversial legislation. He was the ultimate team player, trusted on all sides and a specialist in social security, whose knowledge matched that of many of the department’s officials. Tony was later to be one of the most reliable and trusted ministers in my government.

      We all worked in Alexander Fleming House, an appalling concrete-and-plate-glass building, full of airless corridors. Since it was two miles south of the Thames, at the Elephant and Castle, it was something of an outpost of Margaret Thatcher’s empire. It was close by the London Electricity Board building where, more than twenty years earlier, I had been so pleased to find a job. That memory was a reminder to me of the hidden difficulties faced by the people affected by the department’s decisions.

      The eighties was a decade that gloried in thrusting self-reliance. Success was envied and aped. This stand-on-your-own-two-feet mentality drove Britain towards better things. It helped the nation regain its respect. But self-reliance can be taken too far, and a proper balance must be kept. Some people simply do not have the capacity to succeed, and others are trapped by circumstances. Many of these people were our clients in Social Security, and our policy was to target help to those most in need, and to enable as many as possible to cope on their own.

      The department, when I arrived, was on the threshold of complex and (in the end) effective reforms to pension and social security benefits. The aim was to simplify the system and to ensure that benefits went to the people who actually needed them. A Bill had already been drafted before my promotion, but when Tony and I began to take the legislation through the Commons we very quickly realised that its later clauses, which dealt with social security, were deficient, and would not achieve their objectives. They could not be passed as they stood.

      We hit on a solution. I would take the first twenty clauses, on pensions, through Commons committee stage on my own, while Tony and Norman rewrote the latter half of the Bill. The pension clauses were ferociously complex, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when the committee met, I was up by five in the morning to brief myself properly. The Bill undertook the liberalisation of the private pension market. This would make it easier for people to take their pension with them from one job to another without being penalised, and it also offered help to people to build up a personal pension plan of their own. Millions of individuals were to benefit, with the help of government support and generous tax relief. Over six million people were to take out personal pensions, with well over £200 billion held in them. The Bill was a tough baptism for a junior minister, but it enabled me to form an excellent working relationship with Tony and Norman, and speedily settled me into the department.

      On social security, the Conservative government was viewed with suspicion by a Labour Party confident in its attacks on us. This confidence was not always matched by the ability of the party’s front bench team, but nonetheless, the political battleground gave me a lot of experience at the dispatch box.

      After late-night votes Tony Newton and I would often linger to chat over a drink. Like me, he was a politics addict who had learned his trade in the Whips’ Office, and from the outset our relationship was easy. Tony was a habitual smoker – something of an embarrassment when he became Health Minister – and was forever harassed, because he took on more commitments than any mortal could easily handle. He offered help to others, but rarely asked for it himself, even when his need was evident. Once he lost two front teeth in an accident shortly before he was due to appear both in committee and on television. I offered to do the television