Norman Lamont

Norman Stewart Hughson Lamont, Baron Lamont of Lerwick, PC (born 8 May 1942) was Conservative Member of Parliament for Kingston-upon-Thames, England from 1972 until 1997. In 1998 he was created a life peer. He was best-known for his period serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1990 until 1993.

Early career

Lamont was born in the Shetland Islands on 8 May 1942 and was educated at Loretto School, Musselburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland and Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, England where he was President of the Cambridge Union Society in 1964. He also took part in the English-Speaking Union's Tour of 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. He worked in the finance industry (in particular N M Rothschild & Sons) before standing as a candidate for Member of Parliament in the June 1970 General Election for Hull East. He was defeated by the current Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott. Two years later, in 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 at the time of Nigel Lawson's resignation and remained in that position 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.

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. Whatever the political problems his policies caused, it was during his time as Chancellor that the basic principles which led to Britain's economic success in the past 10 years (to 2005) were first spelled out. Conventional wisdom said that without membership of the ERM, there could be no successful counter-inflationary policy in the UK. In fact, within a remarkably short space of time a formal inflation target had been adopted, monetary policy had been given intellectual rigour and restoration of public finances had begun. All these measures caused great unpopularity at the time. But they became the building blocks of economic policy under his successors, who were able to reap the gain from the pain which he had inflicted on consumers.

During the autumn of 1992 Lamont became a national laughing-stock, beset by 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" 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 latter story in particular turned out to have been entirely invented.

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. When called to defend him on Newsnight his friend the former Labour MP Lord Wyatt caused further merriment by claiming that Lamont could do an excellent impersonation of a Scops owl. After the government's massive loss in the by-election Lamont left office (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 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 Sir 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". 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 big downturn.

In the following years Lamont became a fierce critic of the Major government. He is now regarded as a staunch euro-sceptic. In 1995 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. He is the current vice president of the euro-sceptic Bruges Group.

Despite departing under a cloud, Lamont defends his budget record. The 1991 budget, in which he seized the opportunity presented by Mrs Thatcher's retirement 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 southerly 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 seat 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 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 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 lacked policies.[1]

Business interests

Consultant to The Consensus Group (formerly Rotch Property)

Consultant, Fintrade

Stanley Leisure plc

Consultant to Uniastrum Bank

Chairman, Advisory Board of Uniastrum

Chairman, Small Companies Dividend Trust

Director, Balli Group plc (steel and commodity trading house)

Director, Compagnie Internationale de Participations Bancaires et Financieres (Investment Company)

Director, European Growth and Income Trust (Investment Trust)

Director, Jupiter Finance and Income Trust (Investment Trust)

Director, Scottish Re (Reinsurance Company)

Director, RAB Capital plc

Member of the Advisory Board, MerchantBridge & Co

Member of the Advisory Board of Unistream

Secretary and office at Balli plc (steel and commodity tradinghouse) (Secretary primarily business and personal but some parliamentary work)

Chairman, Le Cercle

Chairman, British Iranian Chamber of Commerce

President, British Romanian Chamber of Commerce

Vice-President, Bruges Group

Hon. Chairman of the International Association of Money Transfer Networks

source: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/183/18311.htm

References

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• Lamont, Norman (1999). In Office. Little Brown. ISBN 0-7515-3058-1.  (Lamont's autobiography)

Trivia

• The stand-up comedian Julian Clary was cast into the show business wilderness after making the sexually explicit joke, "I've just been fisting Norman Lamont" at the 1993 British Comedy Awards. The comment was made before the watershed, and the audience reaction was sufficiently raucous that his intended punchline ("Talk about a red box!") was almost entirely drowned out. His career was adversely affected by the event.

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