Nigel Beard
First and only Labour MP to represent Bexleyheath
NIGEL BEARD, who has died aged 80, was a business and defence analyst who, at 60, was the oldest member of the Commons’ huge Labour intake in 1997.
His defeat of the Tory David Evennett at Bexleyheath & Crayford was one of many surprises that election night. Beard – the only Labour MP ever to represent Bexleyheath – held on in 2001, but lost the seat to Evennett four years later.
Beard’s politics were moderate and proeuropean. He campaigned locally on health and transport issues, and at Westminster introduced Bills for British Summer Time all the year round.
He spoke in support of the Us-british intervention in Iraq in 2003, and afterwards opposed a judicial review of its origins and prosecution.
Christopher Nigel Beard was born in Leeds on October 10 1936. His father was a railway goods porter and union activist. From Castleford Grammar School he read Physics at University College London; he later studied at the London Business School.
After a year teaching maths at Tadcaster Grammar School, in 1959 he joined English Electric’s power division, working on the design of the original Hinkley Point power station.
After two years with Esso, he joined the MOD as a principal scientific officer. From 1968 he was Superintendent of Studies, Army land operations in defence of Europe. In 1973 he joined the GLC as its chief strategy planner, then for five years headed its London Docklands development team.
He moved on to ICI in 1979 as a senior consultant, and from 1993 until his election to Parliament was an R&D executive with the company’s pharmaceutical subsidiary Zeneca.
Beard joined the Labour Party in 1963 and in 1981-82 was Woking constituency party chairman.
He fought Woking in 1979, Portsmouth North in 1983 and Erith & Crayford in 1992, cutting David Evennett’s majority to 2,339. For the 1997 election the boundaries were redrawn; he unseated Evennett by 3,415 votes.
Having delivered an impressive maiden speech deploring the loss of engineering jobs in his constituency, Beard spent his first few months as an MP extricating himself from Zeneca.
He used his MOD experience to argue that Britain’s order for 232 Eurofighter aircraft was at least twice what was needed, and that there was no need to continue planning for “tank battles across the north German plains”. He also voted with the Conservatives against his fellow Labour MP Kevin Mcnamara’s move to alter the Oath of Allegiance so Sinn Fein’s MPS could take their seats.
Appointed to the Science & Technology Select Committee, Beard complained of the erosion of research capabilities and standards in Britain’s universities, and urged that the Prince of Wales be invited to explain the “green mysticism” behind his calls for scientists to “work with the grain of nature”.
Early in 2000, Beard was moved to the Treasury Select Committee. Here, he put Howard Davies, chairman of the Financial Services Authority, through a stiff cross-examination on insurance risks, and grilled Inland Revenue officials on their sale of properties to a company registered in Bermuda.
Re-elected in 2001, he was appointed to the Speaker’s Panel of committee chairman; he also co-founded and chaired the all-party committee on financial services and markets.
At the 2005 election Beard lost his seat by 4,551 votes. He was at various times a member of South West Thames regional health authority, the board of the Royal Marsden, and Labour’s National Constitutional Committee.
In 1974 he published The Practical Use of Linear Programming in Planning and Analysis.
In 1969 Nigel Beard married Jennifer Cotton, who survives him with their son and daughter.
Nigel Beard, born October 10 1936, died July 31 2017