Peter Norman Fowler, Baron Fowler, (born 2 February 1938) is a British
politician
A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking, a ...
who served as a member of both
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. S ...
and
John Major
Sir John Major (born 29 March 1943) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1997, and as Member of Parliament ...
's
ministries
Ministry may refer to:
Government
* Ministry (collective executive), the complete body of government ministers under the leadership of a prime minister
* Ministry (government department), a department of a government
Religion
* Christian mi ...
during the 1980s and 1990s. He held the office of
Lord Speaker
The Lord Speaker is the presiding officer, chairman and highest authority of the House of Lords in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The office is analogous to the Speaker of the House of Commons: the Lord Speaker is elected by the members ...
from 1 September 2016 to 30 April 2021.
After serving as Shadow Minister of Transport, Fowler was appointed
Minister of Transport in 1979, being responsible for
making seat belts compulsory. Later, as
Secretary of State for Health and Social Services The Secretary of State for Health and Social Services was a position in the UK cabinet, created on 1 November 1968 with responsibility for the Department of Health and Social Security. It continued until 25 July 1988 when Department of Health and th ...
, he drew public attention to the dangers of
AIDS
Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...
. He resigned from the cabinet as
Employment Secretary, and was
knighted
A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the Christian denomination, church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood ...
in 1990.
Fowler was Chairman of the Conservative Party from 1992 to 1994, Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Transport and the Regions from 1997 to 1998, and Shadow Home Secretary from 1998 to 1999. In 2001, he was created a Conservative
life peer
In the United Kingdom, life peers are appointed members of the peerage whose titles cannot be inherited, in contrast to hereditary peers. In modern times, life peerages, always created at the rank of baron, are created under the Life Peerages ...
. He renounced party political allegiance upon taking office as
Lord Speaker
The Lord Speaker is the presiding officer, chairman and highest authority of the House of Lords in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The office is analogous to the Speaker of the House of Commons: the Lord Speaker is elected by the members ...
. On 25 February 2021, he announced that in April he would be stepping down as Lord Speaker to focus on campaigning work, particularly in relation to AIDS.
Early life
The son of Norman Frederick Fowler and Katherine (
née
A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth re ...
Baker), he was educated at
King Edward VI Grammar School in
Chelmsford
Chelmsford () is a city in the City of Chelmsford district in the county of Essex, England. It is the county town of Essex and one of three cities in the county, along with Southend-on-Sea and Colchester. It is located north-east of London a ...
,
Essex
Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...
; after which he did
National Service
National service is the system of voluntary government service, usually military service. Conscription is mandatory national service. The term ''national service'' comes from the United Kingdom's National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939.
The l ...
as a
second lieutenant
Second lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer military rank in many armed forces, comparable to NATO OF-1 rank.
Australia
The rank of second lieutenant existed in the military forces of the Australian colonies and Australian Army until ...
in the
Essex Regiment. Whilst studying at
Trinity Hall, Cambridge
Trinity Hall (formally The College or Hall of the Holy Trinity in the University of Cambridge) is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.
It is the fifth-oldest surviving college of the university, having been founded in 1350 by ...
(BA Economics & Law 1961), he was Chairman of the
Cambridge University Conservative Association in Michaelmas 1960, in which term he entertained both the Prime Minister
Harold Macmillan
Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986) was a British Conservative statesman and politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963. Caricatured as "Supermac", he ...
and Home Secretary
Rab Butler. He then became a journalist, and worked on ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
''.
Member of Parliament
Fowler was elected for
Nottingham South
Nottingham South is a constituency of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, represented since 2010 by Lilian Greenwood of the Labour Party.
Members of Parliament
Since 2010, the seat has been represented by Lilian Greenwood, who succeede ...
in
1970
Events
January
* January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC.
* January 5 – The 7.1 Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity scale, Mercalli intensity of X (''Extrem ...
; after the seat was abolished, he switched to
Sutton Coldfield
Sutton Coldfield or the Royal Town of Sutton Coldfield, known locally as Sutton ( ), is a town and civil parish in the City of Birmingham, West Midlands, England. The town lies around 8 miles northeast of Birmingham city centre, 9 miles south ...
at the
February 1974 election.
In opposition
During the mid-1970s, Fowler was Shadow Minister of Transport. In April 1976, he was photographed outside the
Palace of Westminster
The Palace of Westminster serves as the meeting place for both the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Informally known as the Houses of Parli ...
having just taken delivery of his third four-cylinder
MG MGB GT – he had reportedly rejected the idea of buying a V8 version on account of the cost.
In government
Upon
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. S ...
becoming Prime Minister in 1979, she did not immediately appoint Fowler to her Cabinet, explaining: "we were short of one place. As a result, Norman Fowler, as Minister of State at Transport, was not able to be an official member of the Cabinet, although he attended all our meetings."
As Secretary of State for Transport, Fowler drove through
Lord Nugent's 1981 bill to make
seat belt
A seat belt (also known as a safety belt, or spelled seatbelt) is a vehicle safety device designed to secure the driver or a passenger of a vehicle against harmful movement that may result during a collision or a sudden stop. A seat belt reduc ...
s compulsory, a law that came into force in 1983.
As Secretary of State for Health and Social Security in 1986, Fowler implemented the first official drive to educate the British public to the dangers of
AIDS
Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...
.
Edwina Currie
Edwina Currie (' Cohen; born 13 October 1946) is a British writer, broadcaster and former politician, serving as Conservative Party Member of Parliament for South Derbyshire from 1983 until 1997. She was a Junior Health Minister for two year ...
(Health) and
John Major
Sir John Major (born 29 March 1943) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1997, and as Member of Parliament ...
(Social Security) both served under him as
junior minister
A minister is a politician who heads a ministry, making and implementing decisions on policies in conjunction with the other ministers. In some jurisdictions the head of government is also a minister and is designated the ‘prime minister’, ...
s.
Backbenches, retirement and Shadow Cabinet
Fowler later resigned from the Cabinet as
Employment Secretary in January 1990; he later claimed that he was the first politician to cite "to spend more time with my
isfamily" as his reason for leaving office, a phrase that has been reused by many others as a reason for a resignation and is often treated as a euphemism.
Following his resignation from the frontbench, Fowler was
knighted
A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the Christian denomination, church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood ...
in 1990.
Fowler then returned twice to front-line politics, first as Chairman of the Conservative Party (as a backbencher in Parliament) from 1992 to 1994, during which time he oversaw the parliamentary boundary changes of the early 1990s; then on the Conservative front bench as Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Transport and the Regions (1997–98) and finally as Shadow Home Secretary (1998–99).
In 2001, Fowler stepped down as a
Member of Parliament
A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...
.
House of Lords
After standing down from the
House of Commons, he entered the
House of Lords
The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the Bicameralism, upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by Life peer, appointment, Hereditary peer, heredity or Lords Spiritual, official function. Like the ...
, sitting on the Conservative benches as Baron Fowler, ''of
Sutton Coldfield
Sutton Coldfield or the Royal Town of Sutton Coldfield, known locally as Sutton ( ), is a town and civil parish in the City of Birmingham, West Midlands, England. The town lies around 8 miles northeast of Birmingham city centre, 9 miles south ...
, in the County of
West Midlands
West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth.
Etymology
The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...
''.
In 2003, Lord Fowler proposed that the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
should appoint a high-level coordinator with
ambassador
An ambassador is an official envoy, especially a high-ranking diplomat who represents a state and is usually accredited to another sovereign state or to an international organization as the resident representative of their own government or sov ...
ial rank to deal with the
AIDS
Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...
epidemic
An epidemic (from Ancient Greek, Greek ἐπί ''epi'' "upon or above" and δῆμος ''demos'' "people") is the rapid spread of disease to a large number of patients among a given population within an area in a short period of time.
Epidemics ...
.
In 2006, he chaired a
House of Lords
The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the Bicameralism, upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by Life peer, appointment, Hereditary peer, heredity or Lords Spiritual, official function. Like the ...
select committee Select committee may refer to:
*Select committee (parliamentary system), a committee made up of a small number of parliamentary members appointed to deal with particular areas or issues
*Select or special committee (United States Congress)
*Select ...
which criticised the use of the
television licence fee
A television licence or broadcast receiving licence is a payment required in many countries for the reception of Television broadcasting, television broadcasts, or the possession of a television set where some broadcasts are funded in full or ...
, which is used to fund the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...
.
His book ''A Political Suicide'' (Politico's Publishing ) was published in 2008, and was shortlisted for the Channel 4 Political Book of the Year Award.
In May 2013, Fowler gave his support to
legislation aiming to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples, stating: "Parliament should value people equally in the law, and that enabling same-sex couples to marry removes the current inequity."
He was
elected as
Lord Speaker
The Lord Speaker is the presiding officer, chairman and highest authority of the House of Lords in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The office is analogous to the Speaker of the House of Commons: the Lord Speaker is elected by the members ...
in 2016. He is the third person and first man to hold the office since it was established by the
Constitutional Reform Act 2005. Fowler has stated that he favours reducing the House of Lords to 600 members.
On 19 March 2020, during the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
he announced that he would be withdrawing from Westminster and
remote work
Remote work, also called work from home (WFH), work from anywhere, telework, remote job, mobile work, and distance work is an employment arrangement in which employees do not commute to a central place of work, such as an office building, ware ...
ing, with deputy speakers taking over his role in the House of Lords, but he returned in July to continue his role.
On 25 February 2021, Fowler announced that he would be stepping down ahead of the introduction of a series of structural and organisational changes and announced that it would be best if those changes were "seen through by the team who will be implementing them". He also stated his desire to stand down in order to "speak his mind" as an independent member of the House of Lords on issues he has campaigned for, in particular
LGBT rights in the United Kingdom and
HIV and AIDS
Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...
. In March 2021, Fowler backed calls for the UK's first ever national AIDS memorial, with the aim of fighting
stigma and discrimination against those with HIV and AIDS.
Private sector
Lord Fowler has served on the board of directors of several companies and is
non-executive chairman
The chairperson, also chairman, chairwoman or chair, is the presiding officer of an organized group such as a board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office, who is typically elected or appointed by members of the group ...
of
Aggregate Industries plc. He is a member of the
National Union of Journalists.
Notes
References
External links
Official website of the Lord Speaker*
*
- a ''Guardian'' article by Michael White, dated 21 February 2003
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Fowler, Norman
1938 births
Military personnel from Chelmsford
Alumni of Trinity Hall, Cambridge
British Secretaries of State for Employment
Chairmen of the Conservative Party (UK)
Conservative Party (UK) life peers
Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies
LGBT rights activists from the United Kingdom
Essex Regiment officers
Knights Bachelor
Living people
Lords Speaker
Members of the Bow Group
Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom
People educated at King Edward VI Grammar School, Chelmsford
People from Chelmsford
Secretaries of State for Health and Social Services
Secretaries of State for Transport (UK)
UK MPs 1970–1974
UK MPs 1974
UK MPs 1974–1979
UK MPs 1979–1983
UK MPs 1983–1987
UK MPs 1987–1992
UK MPs 1992–1997
UK MPs 1997–2001
Life peers created by Elizabeth II