Baroness Nicol
Labour peer widely respected for her work on the environment
BARONESS NICOL, who has died aged 94, was a persuasive environmentalist who graduated from Cambridge city council to the Labour front bench in the Lords, becoming deputy Opposition chief whip and a deputy Speaker.
Small in stature, Wendy Nicol earned respect in the upper house and beyond through her capacity to make sure of her ground, weigh her words carefully, then deliver them to maximum effect.
While she came into her own during the debates in the late 1980s on water privatisation, she made a valuable contribution across the entire spectrum of nature and human interaction with it. She served on select committees investigating issues from nuclear waste to scientific experiments on animals, and took a particular interest in forestry.
On several issues, notably Nicholas Ridley’s efforts to restructure the National Countryside Commission (NCC), she joined forces with her friend Baroness David, a former council colleague and a fellow whip.
She was also a leading light in the Co-operative Party. A director and from 1981-85 president of Cambridge Co-operative Society, she promoted the movement’s ideals at Westminster and in 1997-98 chaired the All-party Retail Group.
She was born Olive Mary Wendy Rowe-hunter on March 21 1923, the daughter of James and Harriet Rowe-hunter, and educated at Cahir School, Co Tipperary; in later life she advocated integrated education for Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.
From school she joined the Inland Revenue as a clerical officer, transferring to the Admiralty in 1944 as an inspector. She stayed there four years.
Marrying and settling in Cambridge, she became active in the community and in 1967 was appointed a trustee of the Cambridge United Charities. Five years later she became a magistrate and a councillor, chairing the city’s Environment Committee from 1978.
In 1982 she was given a life peerage; the next year she was appointed an Opposition whip and spokesman on the environment. In 1987 she was promoted to deputy Chief Whip, but gave up two years later to concentrate on environmental issues. She sought to extend planning controls to forestry and farming, and pressed for conservationists to be fully involved in overseeing the Norfolk Broads. But water privatisation kept her busiest.
When it was first debated in 1986, she warned that if Margaret Thatcher’s government went ahead with it, the industry could be severely damaged. As the privatisation Bill went through three years later, she voiced concern that two-thirds of the land owned by water boards was not safeguarded against development. And after its passage she accused Ridley of neutering the Countryside Commissions for Scotland and Wales for having dared warn of the environmental risks.
Lady Nicol later served on a Select Committee under Lord Carver whose recommendations about the future of the NCC in England and the National Parks Commission were largely accepted – except, to her disappointment, for a recommendation that dogs be registered.
From 1995 to 2002 she was a deputy Speaker, spanning the governments of John Major and Tony Blair and the change in the composition and feel of the House stemming from the exclusion in 1999 of all but 92 of the hereditary peers.
She served for several years on the Lords’ Ecclesiastical Committee and Select Committees on the European Communities and Science & Technology.
She was a vice-president of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the Marine Conservation Society.
Olive Rowe-hunter married Dr Alexander Nicol in 1947; he died in 2009. She is survived by their two sons and a daughter.
Baroness Nicol, born March 21 1923, died January 15 2018