Nigel Forman
Tory ‘wet’ denied office during the Thatcher years who was briefly a junior minister under Major
NIGEL FORMAN, who has died aged 74, was an intelligent and articulate Tory “wet” who was PPS to Douglas Hurd and – surprisingly – Nigel Lawson; but in a 21-year Commons career he spent just eight months as a minister, in the government of John Major, whom he had beaten to a seat.
Dapper, balding and donnish, Forman had a good intellect and his pro-europeanism served him well in the Conservative Research Department when Edward Heath was leader. But while his criticisms of Margaret Thatcher’s policies were usually measured, they denied him office and upset activists in his Carshalton constituency, who made several attempts to get rid of him.
In her first year, Forman called for higher child benefits, opposed a lower time limit for abortions and spoke up for James Prior’s “step by step” approach to trade union reform when the Tory Right demanded more drastic legislation.
Forman’s criticism was usually not delivered head on but – in the words of a Telegraph sketch writer – “slyly, under the armpit”. In February 1981, however, Labour MPS cheered him when he asked Sir Geoffrey Howe to act to halt the rise in unemployment. That summer he called for a six-month wage freeze.
After Shirley Williams’s capture of safe Conservative Crosby for the SDP in 1982, Forman stuck his neck out by calling on Mrs Thatcher to change her tune. He was called to heel by his constituency association, and the next year survived a no-confidence motion.
When in 1983 Francis Pym formed Conservative Centre Forward as a rallying-point for Tory moderates, Forman attended its inaugural meeting. Discovering this two years later, critics in the constituency accused him of a “stab in the back”.
After the Conservatives lost Sutton council to the Sdp/liberal Alliance in the 1986 local elections, Forman wrote to Mrs Thatcher blaming “bigots and zealots [in the party locally] who indulge in internecine warfare”. His opponents retaliated by blaming him for the defeat.
Forman feared Britain was placing an undue reliance on nuclear power, and raised concerns about the potential for radioactive leaks from power plants and materials in transit. One of the earliest Tory “greens”, he published a pamphlet in 1979 urging Conservatives to stop building oil-fired power stations, eat less meat and reduce air pollution, and promoted a Bill giving the public a right of access to information about environmental hazards.
Francis Nigel Forman was born at Simla, India, on March 25 1943, the son of Brigadier and Mrs JF R Forman. From Shrewsbury School his academic career took in New College, Oxford; the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard; Sussex University, where he took a PHD; and the College of Europe at Bruges.
From 1970 he spent a year as an information officer at the CBI before joining the Conservative Research Department as its European desk officer, providing briefing as Edward Heath took Britain into the EEC. From 1975 he was the department’s assistant director.
Forman fought Coventry North-east at the February 1974 election. Then, early in 1976, he was selected for Carshalton when the former home secretary Robert Carr took a peerage. He was chosen ahead of six past or future MPS including John Major, who would wait three more years for a seat.
In the by-election that March, Forman took the seat with a majority of 9,732 over Labour, almost three times Carr’s majority. By 1987, with the constituency redrawn as Carshalton and Wallington, he increased the margin to 14,409 (with the Alliance second).
At Westminster he joined the Science and Technology Select Committee, and was secretary to the Conservative backbench energy and education committees.
When Mrs Thatcher led the party back to power in 1979, Forman became PPS to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, and his minister of state Ian Gilmour. After Carrington’s resignation following Argentina’s seizure of the Falklands, he was for a time PPS to Douglas Hurd.
In 1984 Forman stood for the chairmanship of the Conservative backbench finance committee against the incumbent right-winger Sir William Clark. He lost, but impressed the whips by agreeing to serve as Clark’s deputy. He went on to publish – with the more Right-wing John Maples – a pamphlet advocating a package of measures to stimulate employment, and to table amendments to the 1986 Finance Bill promoting employee ownership.
After the 1987 election Lawson – appreciating Forman’s economic acumen and his links to a potentially troublesome section of the party – took him into the Treasury as his PPS. The arrangement worked well, and Forman stayed until Lawson’s resignation two years later.
Forman was moving into the party mainstream – having just been elected to the 1922 Committee executive – when Michael Heseltine mounted his challenge to Mrs Thatcher, Major triumphing in the second ballot.
Having won the 1992 election, Major appointed him Parliamentary Undersecretary for Education, responsible for higher and further education. Politically he counterbalanced his fellow junior minister Eric Forth, who was well to the Right.
Forman dealt skilfully with several high profile issues: the funding of student unions, student loans and the quality assurance of degrees issued by new universities. But that December he resigned, citing “personal reasons” on which he never elaborated.
Long a champion of Carshalton’s commuters, Forman asked pertinent questions when the government decided to separate track and train operation as the railways were privatised. He pressed the Transport Secretary, John Macgregor, to say whether the change would make the trains more reliable, improve the infrastructure and ensure that train crews turned up for work.
In November 1994 Forman abandoned his convalescence from an appendix operation to back Major against a Eurosceptic no-confidence motion. Though by now a government loyalist, he sided with the Right two years later in pressing for a flat rate of income tax.
Forman’s seat looked safe as the 1997 election approached, but the national anti-tory swing proved irresistible and he lost by 2,267 votes to the Liberal Democrat Tom Brake.
Having for years lectured on British politics to visiting American students, Forman now became tutor at Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Oxfordshire campus. From 2002 he was also a senior research fellow at University College London’s constitution unit. He was for 13 years a director of HFC bank, having previously been a consultant for Kleinwort Benson.
At various times Forman chaired the Gb-europe Centre, was a member of the Economic and Social Research Council and was a council member of the Federal Trust and the Tavistock Institute. His most successful book was Mastering British Politics (1987).
Nigel Forman is survived by his wife Suzi, whom he married in 1971. There were no children.