Sir Oliver Letwin | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
.jpg) Official portrait, 2015 | |||||||||||||
| Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster | |||||||||||||
| In office 15 July 2014 – 14 July 2016 | |||||||||||||
| Prime Minister | David Cameron | ||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Jonathan Hill | ||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Patrick McLoughlin | ||||||||||||
| Minister of State for Government Policy | |||||||||||||
| In office 12 May 2010 – 14 July 2016 | |||||||||||||
| Prime Minister | David Cameron | ||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Office established | ||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Office abolished | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
| Member of Parliament forWest Dorset | |||||||||||||
| In office 1 May 1997 – 6 November 2019 | |||||||||||||
| Preceded by | James Spicer | ||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Chris Loder | ||||||||||||
| Personal details | |||||||||||||
| Born | (1956-05-19)19 May 1956 (age 69) London, England | ||||||||||||
| Political party | Conservative | ||||||||||||
| Spouse | |||||||||||||
| Children | 2 | ||||||||||||
| Education | Eton College | ||||||||||||
| Alma mater | Trinity College, Cambridge London Business School | ||||||||||||
| Academic background | |||||||||||||
| Thesis | Emotion and emotions (1982) | ||||||||||||
Sir Oliver LetwinFRSA (born 19 May 1956)[1] is a British politician,Member of Parliament (MP) forWest Dorset from1997 to2019. Letwin was elected as a member of theConservative Party, but sat as an independent after having thewhip removed in September 2019. He wasShadow Chancellor of the Exchequer underMichael Howard andShadow Home Secretary underIain Duncan Smith. He wasChancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster from 2014 to 2016.
Following the2015 general election Letwin was given overall responsibility for theCabinet Office and became a full member of theCabinet in theConservative government. Previously he had been the Minister of State for Government Policy from 2010.[2]
During theSecond May ministry in 2019, Letwin rebelled against leadingEurosceptics within theConservative Party by tabling a cross-party motion to hold "indicative votes", allowing MPs to vote on severalBrexit options in order to establish whether any could command a majority in the House of Commons; it transpired that none of them could.[3] Letwin sought to extendArticle 50 through passing theCooper–Letwin Act. In August 2019 he announced that he would stand down at the next election.[4] On 3 September 2019, helost the Conservative party whip and sat as an independent MP after that.
Letwin, who was born 19 May 1956 in London, is the son ofWilliam Letwin (14 December 1922 – 20 February 2013),emeritus professor at theLondon School of Economics, and theconservative academicShirley Robin Letwin.[5][6] His parents were "Jewish-American intellectuals fromChicago whose parents had fled persecution inKiev."[7]
He was educated atThe Hall School, Hampstead and atEton College. He then went toTrinity College, Cambridge, where he received a double first in history.[8][9] From 1980 to 1981, Letwin was a visiting fellow (a Procter Fellow) ofPrinceton University, then a research fellow ofDarwin College, Cambridge, from 1981 until 1982.[10] His thesis,Emotion and Emotions, earned aPhD awarded by theCambridge Philosophy Faculty in 1982.[11] He is also a graduate of theLondon Business School.[12]
He was a member ofPrime MinisterMargaret Thatcher'sPolicy Unit from 1983 to 1986.
According to official government documents from 1985, released in December 2014 under thethirty-year rule, Letwin recommended that the Prime Minister "use Scotland as a trail-blazer for the pure residence charge", i.e. the controversialCommunity Charge or "Poll tax", having trialled it there first, and to implement it nationwide should "the exemplifications prove ... it is feasible."[13]
Another 1985 internal memo released in December 2015 showed Letwin's response to theBroadwater Farm riot, which blamed the violence on the "bad moral attitudes" of the predominantly Afro-Caribbean rioters, claiming that "lower-class, unemployed white people lived for years without a breakdown of public order on anything like the present scale". It also criticised some of the schemes proposed to address inner-city problems, suggestingDavid Young's proposed scheme to support black entrepreneurs would flounder because the money would be spent on the "disco and drug trade". Letwin later apologised, saying that parts of the memo had been "both badly worded and wrong."[14][15][16]
Letwin co-authoredBritain's biggest enterprise: ideas for radical reform of the NHS, a 1988Centre for Policy Studies pamphlet written withJohn Redwood which advocated a closer relationship between theNational Health Service and the private sector. This is regarded as providing a theoretical justification for NHS reforms carried out by subsequent governments, particularly theHealth and Social Care Act 2012.[17]
Letwin stood unsuccessfully againstDiane Abbott inHackney North and Stoke Newington at the1987 election, and againstGlenda Jackson for theHampstead and Highgate seat at the1992 election.[18][19]
Letwin won the historicallysafe Conservative seat ofWest Dorset at the1997 general election, achieving a majority of 1,840 votes over the next candidate.[20]
 | This section of abiography of a living personneeds additionalcitations forverification. Please help by addingreliable sources.Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced orpoorly sourcedmust be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentiallylibelous. Find sources: "Oliver Letwin" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(August 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
AsLeader of the Opposition andLeader of the Conservative PartyWilliam Hague appointed Letwin as a member of hisShadow Cabinet asShadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury in September 2000. He supportedMichael Portillo andMichael Howard in their consecutive tenures asShadow Chancellor of the Exchequer.
He had previously been an official Opposition spokesman on Constitutional Affairs, Scotland and Wales from 1998, and was promoted toShadow Financial Secretary to the Treasury in 1999.
During the campaign for the2001 general election, Letwin expressed an aspiration to curtail futurepublic spending by £20 billion per annum relative to the plans of theLabour government. When this proposal came under attack as regressive, Letwin found few of his colleagues to defend it, and he adopted a low profile for the remainder of the campaign. He went into hiding during the 2001 election.[21] At this election, his majority in hisWest Dorsetconstituency was cut to 1,414 votes.
In September 2001, he was appointedShadow Home Secretary by the new Conservative Party leaderIain Duncan Smith. In this role, he attracted plaudits for his advocacy of a "neighbourly society", which manifested itself in calls for street by street neighbourhood policing, modelled on the philosophy of the police in New York. He was also largely credited with forcing the thenHome Secretary to withdraw his proposal in 2001 to introduce an offence of incitement to religious hatred. He successfully argued that such an offence would be impossible to define, so there would be little chance of prosecution. He also argued that Muslims would feel persecuted by such a law. In late 2003,Michael Howard appointed Letwin as his successor asShadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. As Shadow Chancellor he focused on reducing waste in the public sector.
At the2005 general election the Conservative Party claimed to have found £35 billion worth of potential savings, to be used for increased resources for front-line services and for tax cuts. This approach was credited with forcing the government to introduce bureaucracy reduction and cost-cutting proposals of their own. In May 2005, Letwin's majority in his seat increased to 2,461 votes, despite his hard pro-EU views.[22] After the election, Letwin was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.The Times reported that he had requested a role less onerous than his former Treasury brief so that he would have time to pursue his career in the City.[23] Until December 2009, he was a non-executive director of the merchant bankNM Rothschild Corporate Finance Ltd.[24]
FollowingMichael Howard's decision to stand down as Conservative Party leader after the2005 election, Letwin publicly backed the youngest candidate and eventual winnerDavid Cameron.
In the lead-up to the2010 general election, Letwin played an important role in the development ofConservative policy, and was described byDaniel Finkelstein as "theGandalf of the process".[25] The 2010 general election saw him increase his majority to 3,923 votes.[26]
BritishPrime MinisterDavid Cameron appointed Letwin to the newly created office ofMinister of State for Government Policy in the newly formedConservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government in May 2010. His responsibilities included developing government policies with the Cabinet Office, as set out in theCoalition's programme for government, as well as implementing departmental business plans. He also attended the Cabinet, although not as a full member or Cabinet Minister.
Letwin was appointed asChancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster on 14 July 2014, succeedingLord Hill of Oareford who became theUnited Kingdom's nextEuropean commissioner.[27] He also continued in his role as Minister for Policy until the 2015 general election, when the position was abolished.
He was returned with a much increased majority of 16,130 votes by his West Dorset constituents at the2015 general election. Following that election, Letwin remained Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Cameron also appointed him as a full member of the new Conservative government'sCabinet with responsibility for overall charge and oversight of theCabinet Office.
Immediately following the 23 June2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, Cameron appointed Letwin "Minister for Brexit". He appeared on 5 July before theForeign Affairs Select Committee and was criticised for Government's lack of planning for a leave vote. The Cabinet was accused of "dereliction of duty". When committee chairmanCrispin Blunt observed, upon the resignation of Cameron, that Letwin had been left "holding the baby", Letwin said,[28]"I can only say that the baby is being firmly held, and that my intention is that the baby should prosper – because I care about the baby in question. It is, in fact, our country."
Letwin was awarded aknighthood byDavid Cameron in the2016 Prime Minister's Resignation Honours List. This gave him thehonorific title "Sir" for life.
The new Prime MinisterTheresa May terminated Letwin's tenure as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and split the Minister for Brexit position he had held, creating theSecretary of State for Exiting the European Union and handing that job to arch-LeaverDavid Davis.[29]
In 2018, Letwin led an "independent review" into the delivery of housing on large development sites.[30]
During theSecond May ministry in 2019, Letwin rebelled against leadingEurosceptics within theConservative Party by tabling a cross-party motion to hold "indicative votes", allowing MPs to vote on several Brexit options in order to establish whether any could command a majority in the House of Commons. Though no option received a positive number of votes, the "People's Vote" proposal fromMargaret Beckett was the most popular.[3]
In August 2019, Letwin announced that he would stand down at the next general election.[31] On 3 September 2019 he proposed theLetwin motion upon the Benn bill under Standing Order No. 24,[32] and then, with 20 other rebel Conservative MPs, voted against the Conservative government ofBoris Johnson.[33] The rebel MPs voted for the Letwin motion to take control of parliamentary business from the government, for the purpose of introducing a bill which would prevent the Prime Minister's policy of allowing the United Kingdom to leave the EU without a deal on 31 October.[34] The bill thus introduced the next day became theEuropean Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act 2019. Subsequently, all 21 were advised that they had lost the Conservativewhip,[35] expelling them as Conservative MPs and requiring them to sit as independents.[36][37] If Letwin had decided to stand for re-election in a future election the party would have blocked him as a Conservative candidate,[34] but that was immaterial for him, as he had already promised in August to stand down.[31]
After his summary ejection from the Conservative parliamentary party, Letwin sat as an independent. On 19 October 2019, hetabled an amendment to the Government business of the 'super Saturday' session.[38] His amendment passed by 322 to 306 votes. The government then deferred the vote it had planned for that day on the actual deal itself. His amendment attracted the support of ten former Conservative and tenDemocratic Unionist Party members, while the government attracted the votes of sixLabour MPs and seventeen independents. Eight Labour MPs, five Conservatives and one independent member did not vote on the Letwin motion.[39] The following day,The Sunday Telegraph published a declaration from an anonymous Conservative source that Letwin's motion had been masterminded byLord Pannick, the barrister who had representedGina Miller in her actions against theJohnson ministry's Brexit policy.[40]
After announcing that he would not stand in the2019 general election, Letwin was succeeded as the Conservative candidate for Dorset West byChris Loder, who was subsequently elected as the seat's MP.[41]
Letwin maintained in June 2017 that the public is willing to increase taxes carefully for large numbers of people to pay for improved public services. Letwin said, "It may well be, in one way or another, a large number of people will have to pay a little more tax if we are going to maintain the trend towards reduced deficits and yet spend a little more on the crucial public services that do need more spent on them". Letwin wants to see better public services rather than higher public sector pay. Letwin believes reducing the deficit is important so Britain is protected when the next downturn comes.[42][43]
In 1985, Letwin andHartley Booth wrote a five-page document[44] as members of then-Prime Minister Thatcher's policy unit in response to the widespread 1985 unrest in Britain's inner cities – with riots inBroadwater Farm estates inTottenham,North London,Handsworth,Brixton,Peckham andToxteth.[45][46][47][48] In the paper, Letwin and Booth urged "Thatcher to ignore reports that rioting in mainly black urban areas was the result of social deprivation and racism."[49] Letwin was at the time considered to be a "young star" of the Conservative Party. The memo scorned suggestions by senior cabinet ministers to set up a £10 million communities programme to tackle inner-city problems by helping black entrepreneurs start businesses as suggested by then-Employment SecretaryDavid Young, refurbishing public housing council blocks as suggested by then-Environment SecretaryKenneth Baker and "establishing training programmes for low-income youth."
Letwin said it would not ameliorate the situation but would do little more than "subsidise Rastafarian arts and crafts workshops" stating that black "entrepreneurs will set up in the disco and drug trade."[50] When the 1985 paper was released to public record by theCabinet Office along with other Whitehall papers under accelerated procedures of the30 years rule into the public record through the National Archives inKew, West London[44] on 30 December 2015, a chastened Letwin apologised on the same day for "the offence caused".[49][50]
Following reports tonight, I want to make clear that some parts of a private memo I wrote nearly 30 years ago were both badly worded and wrong. I apologise unreservedly for any offence these comments have caused and wish to make clear that none was intended.
— Oliver Letwin, Statement 30 December 2015
Trevor PhillipsOBE, former head of theEquality and Human Rights Commission observed that, "I don't think these remarks would have raised a single eyebrow at the time."[51]
The 1985 Broadwater Farm memo argued the riots were caused by bad behaviour not social conditions.[52] The policy unit proposed a programme for creating "better attitudes," including measures to encourage the establishment of 'old-fashioned independent schools' which Cabinet Secretary SirRobert Armstrong warned in 1985 constitutedsocial engineering.[44]
The root of social malaise is not poor housing, or youth 'alienation' or the lack of a middle class. ... Lower-class, unemployed white people lived for years in appalling slums without a breakdown of public order on anything like the present scale; in the midst of the depression, people in Brixton went out, leaving their grocery money in a bag at the front door, and expecting to see groceries there when they got back ... Riots, criminality and social disintegration are caused solely by individual characters and attitudes. So long as bad moral attitudes remain, all efforts to improve the inner cities will founder ... [Lord] Young's new entrepreneurs will set up in the disco and drug trade; Kenneth Baker's refurbished council blocks will decay through vandalism combined with neglect; and people will graduate from temporary training or employment programmes into unemployment or crime.
— Oliver Letwin and Hartley Booth. November 1985. Policy Broadwater Farm memo to Prime Minister Thatcher (released to public domain on 30 December 2015)
Labour MPChuka Umunna, whoseStreatham constituency included parts of Brixton, said the tone of the memo was "positivelyVictorian." He added:[44]
The attitudes towards the black community exhibited in the paper are disgusting and appalling ... The authors of this paper illustrate a complete ignorance of what was going on in our community at that time, as evidenced by their total and utter disregard of the rampant racism in the Met Police which caused the community to boil over – there is no mention of that racism in their paper.[44]
In July 2014 theMetropolitan Police Commissioner, SirBernard Hogan-Howe, apologised "unreservedly" for the shooting and the time it had taken to say sorry" following an inquest into the death of Dorothy "Cherry" Groce, whose shooting by the Metropolitan Police triggered the riots. The jury inquest blamed the Metropolitan Police for failures that contributed to Groce's death.[47][48]
In 2003, while Shadow Home Secretary, Letwin announced a policy to prevent anyasylum seekers entering the UK instead suggesting a "far off-shore processing centre". When questioned about where this processing centre would be, he said "I haven't the slightest idea yet".[53] He had previously suggested holding asylum seekers on prison ships for vetting by security services.[54]
In June 2004, Letwin, then Shadow Chancellor, was reported by an attendee to have stated at a private meeting that within five years from a Conservative election victory "the NHS [would] not exist anymore", to be replaced by a "funding stream handing out money to pay people where they want to go for their healthcare". The incident occurred after he had urged local business lobbying efforts to create aPFI hospital inDorchester in May, and dismissed revealing the extent of his planned cuts to public spending to the voters as "irrational". Letwin denied the comments after they were exploited by Labour. A Conservative spokesman asserted Letwin's intended meaning to have been that "within five years a Conservative government would have broken down the monolithic bureaucracy of the health service, putting decision-making in the hands of the hospitals rather than the Whitehall pen-pushers", with "a far more efficient and effective NHS" as the end result.[55]
The Daily Telegraph reported in 2009 that Letwin agreed to repay a bill for £2,145 for replacing a leaking pipe under the tennis court at his constituency home in Dorset, which he had claimed on his parliamentary expenses.[56]
Speaking to consultancy firmKPMG on 27 July 2011, Letwin caused controversy after stating that you cannot have "innovation and excellence" without "real discipline and some fear on the part of the providers" in the public sector. This was widely reported, withThe Guardian headline stating Letwin says "public sector workers need 'discipline and fear'."[57]
In October 2011 theDaily Mirror reported a story that Letwin had thrown away more than 100 secret government documents in public bins inSt James's Park, with no real care to dispose of them properly.[58][59] Enquiries made by the Information Commissioner's Office found that although Letwin did not dispose of any government documents, he had in fact disposed of constituents' personal and confidential letters to him and therefore did breach data protection rules.[60] Letwin later apologised for his actions.[citation needed]
Letwin married government lawyer Isabel Davidson in 1984; the couple have two children.[61]
In 2003,The Independent reported Letwin saying that he would "go out on the streets and beg" rather than send his children to the state schools inLambeth where he and his family lived.[62][63]
 |
He was sworn ofHer Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council in 2002. This gave him thehonorific style "The Right Honourable" for life. He was awarded aknighthood byQueen Elizabeth II after being recommended by David Cameron in the2016 Prime Minister's Resignation Honours. This gave him thehonorific title "Sir" for life. He has been elected as aFellow of the Royal Society of Arts. This gave him thepost-nominal letters "FRSA" for life.
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forWest Dorset 1997–2019 | Succeeded by |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury 2000–2001 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Shadow Home Secretary 2001–2003 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer 2003–2005 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded byas Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment | Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs 2005 | Succeeded by |
| New office | Minister of State for Government Policy 2010–2015 | Position abolished |
| Preceded by | Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster 2014–2016 | Succeeded by |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| People | |
| Other | |
_(St_Edwards_Crown).svg)