John Taylor
Conservative MP for Solihull who halted a government plan to sell Land Rover to General Motors
JOHN TAYLOR, who has died aged 75, was an affable Right-winger who served for 22 years as Conservative MP for Solihull after a spell in the European Parliament; previously he spent the same length of time – “miserably”, in his words – as a High Street solicitor.
He was a Government whip under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, then a junior minister in the DTI and the Lord Chancellor’s Department. After the defeat of 1997, he was an Opposition whip and later spokesman on Northern Ireland.
As a backbencher, Taylor championed the South African-born athlete Zola Budd; opposed the ordination of divorced men and lowering of the homosexual age of consent, and was one of a minority of Tories to oppose foxhunting.
In 1986 Taylor stopped in its tracks a government plan to sell off the Land Rover plant in his constituency – then part of British Leyland – to General Motors. Campaigning as “the member for Land Rover” at the following year’s election, he pushed his majority past 21,000.
Solihull’s status as one of the Conservatives’ safest seats owed much to a split in the anti-tory vote between Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Taylor’s majority peaked at 25,146 in 1992, then fell back as the Lib Dems strengthened their position locally. Yet his 279-vote defeat by Lorely Burt in 2005 as Labour supporters switched to the Lib Dems was one of the shocks of the night.
Taylor usually worked behind the scenes to get results, earning a reputation for tenacity. He was helped by being, in the words of his constituency neighbour Caroline Spelman, “a kind man with a big heart”.
John Mark Taylor was born at Hampton-in-arden on August 19 1941, the son of Wilfred Taylor, a company director, and the former Eileen Whitehead.
From Bromsgrove School he studied at the College of Law, being admitted as a solicitor in 1966. He became a partner in Reynolds & Co, then in 1978 he set up his own firm, John Taylor & Co, practising until he joined the government in 1988.
Taylor was elected to Solihull council in 1971, and two years later to the new West Midlands metropolitan county council. He led its Conservative opposition from 1975 to 1977, then the council itself after the Tories took control. In the Commons, he would oppose the council’s abolition by Mrs Thatcher.
He fought his first parliamentary seat – Dudley East – in the two 1974 elections, then was selected for the Midlands East constituency prior to the first direct elections to the European Parliament in 1979. Weeks after Mrs Thatcher came to power, he took the seat by more than 30,000 votes.
Taylor became spokesman for the largely Conservative European Democrats on the community budget, and from 1981-82 the group’s deputy chairman. He pressed at Strasbourg for cuts in EC farm support and more regional funding, sought an inquiry into the cost of EC “fact-finding” missions, and advocated curbs on imports from Japan.
Less than four years into his five-year term, Taylor was picked from 229 hopefuls to succeed Sir Percy Grieve at Solihull, and in the 1983 election he held the seat with a majority of 17,394.
At Westminster, he served on the Environment Select Committee and was vice-chairman of the Conservative backbench committees on Europe and sport. In 1985 Taylor, wearing his solicitor’s hat, accused the building societies of having a “privileged and dominant position” and only lending with “belt, braces and form-fitting trousers”.
As the motor industry in the West Midlands staggered from crisis to crisis, Taylor warned that the region had already lost its motorcycle plants because of inadequate R&D. Then, early in 1986, with Mrs Thatcher seeking to end government subsidies to BL, he proposed floating Land Rover as a separate company. When it emerged that the DTI had plans to sell it to GM, he warned of a “general revolt” if this were done. The idea was hastily dropped.
After the 1987 election, Taylor became PPS at the DTI to Kenneth Clarke, Lord Young’s earthly representative in the Commons. The following year, Mrs Thatcher appointed him a whip. Regular promotions followed, and after earning praise for some tough whipping on the Broadcasting Bill committee early in 1990 he was appointed Vice-chamberlain of the Royal Household, with responsibility for keeping the Queen informed of events in the Commons.
Following John Major’s unexpected retention of power at the 1992 election, he made Taylor Parliamentary Secretary in the Lord Chancellor’s Department, covering in the Commons for Lord Mackay of Clashfern as Clarke had done for Lord Young. Labour’s Paul Boateng could not resist describing the smartly turned-out Taylor as “the Lord Chancellor’s valet”.
Three years on, with major changes to divorce law imminent and Taylor not a specialist in the subject, he was moved to the DTI as Parliamentary Under-secretary for Competition and Consumer affairs in a straight swap with Jonathan Evans.
As an opposition whip post-1997, Taylor was free to speak in the House. In January 1999 he called for a Us-style impeachment of the Trade & Industry Secretary Peter Mandelson for not declaring a house purchase loan from his ministerial colleague Geoffrey Robinson. He later claimed that Robinson’s company Transtec had misused government grants.
Taylor stepped down as Northern Ireland spokesman in 2003. Two years later, he lost his seat.
At various times, Taylor was chairman of the Solihull Institute for Medical Training and Research, deputy chairman of the association of Metropolitan Authorities and a governor of Birmingham University. He was also a member of the MCC.
John Taylor married Anne Hall in 1970; the marriage was dissolved in 1990 and there were no children.