Paul Marland
Conservative MP and gentleman farmer who took on Edwina Currie over salmonella in eggs
PAUL MARLAND, who has died aged 81, was Conservative MP from 1979 to 1997 for West Gloucestershire, the constituency embracing the Forest of Dean – the only Tory to hold it during the 20th century.
To some, he was one of the last gentlemen farmers to serve in the Commons, showing near-total loyalty to the leadership of the day in return for an annual pass to go shooting with friends on North Uist.
Yet Marland was considerably more than that. After Edwina Currie’s bombshell comment about salmonella and eggs, he was one of the farming MPS who persuaded Margaret Thatcher late in 1988 that she would have to go, securing £19 million in compensation for egg producers in the process.
He chaired the Conservative backbench agriculture committee for eight years, was for three years PPS to the agriculture minister Michael Jopling, and was an incisive questioner on the Agriculture Select Committee – notably when he took on Mrs Currie over her “exaggerations” after her forced resignation.
Marland opposed efforts to ban hare-coursing, and called for the disabled to have access to self-loading rifles. Yet he was no dinosaur: when the Aids pandemic struck, he called for condom machines to be installed in Conservative clubs.
A Right-wing Selsdon Grouper and Eurosceptic, he was at home politically between 1981 and 1983 as PPS to the Treasury ministers Jock Bruce-gardyne and Nicholas Ridley. He supported corporal punishment and spoke out against “scroungers”, telling the 1970 party conference that Labour’s over-generous social provision encouraged “idleness and indolence”.
Marland was one of the 40-odd Tories who harried Jim Prior to go faster and farther on trade union legislation. And in 1984 he defended Mrs Thatcher’s ban on unions at GCHQ, some of whose staff were his constituents, as necessary “to defend our shores and lives”.
It was also Marland who, having virtually lost his shirt at Lloyd’s, not only claimed the market was poorly regulated and riddled with fraudulent practices, but asserted in one latenight debate that investors had been the victims of insider dealing.
Marland’s losses of £480,000 made him one of the worst hit of the 51 Conservative MPS who were members of Lloyd’s. He was in Syndicate 298, which in 1989 ran up a 730 per cent loss on “names” investments, and Syndicate 290, which reported a 386 per cent loss, and one of the 3,095 “names” on Gooda Walker syndicates who sued their underwriter for £629 million for allegedly negligent underwriting.
Marland applied to the Lloyd’s Members Hardship Committee, run by Mary Archer, to negotiate a settlement of his debts, but at his financial low point did not rule out going bankrupt – which would have triggered a byelection.
Successful applicants to the hardship committee were allowed to keep a house (valued at up to £150,000 in London) and net income of £17,500 per year for a married couple. Marland’s only significant assets were his 1,100acre farm between Cheltenham and Stow-on-the-wold and a flat in Pimlico, but his second wife was a successful businesswoman, Caroline Rushton (Dawood), who in 1995 became managing director of The Guardian.
Marland attacked the hardship committee as “just a way of getting money from spouses as well as ‘names’. Lloyd’s are not only the thieves of yesterday but they are now trying to steal from family members and their inheritances.” Fortunately, he managed to survive financially.
Paul Marland was born in Birmingham on March 19 1940 into a farming family, the son of Alexander Marland and the former Elsa Young. From Gordonstoun he took a degree in Commerce at Trinity College Dublin, completing his studies at the University of Grenoble.
His first jobs were with Hopes Metal Windows and in advertising with the London Press Exchange, but in 1967 he followed his father into farming. Marland farmed 1,100 acres of arable plus a pig-fattening unit, though he joked: “I am trying to grow a crop of caravans, but am severely restricted by the local planning authority.”
He chaired North Cotswold Young Conservatives in 1968, and the next year was elected to the local council. At the 1970 election he took on the hopeless seat of Bedwellty, pitched against the young Neil Kinnock.
West Gloucestershire had been Labour since its creation in 1950, but had become increasingly marginal. In February 1974, despite a national swing to Labour, Marland’s campaigning led to the sitting MP Charles Loughlin increasing his majority only from 1,107 to 1,624.
With a further election certain, Loughlin decided to retire, and that October Marland cut the majority of a fresh Labour candidate, John Watkinson, to just 409.
In September 1978 James Callaghan looked certain to call a snap election. Mrs Thatcher was in Coleford campaigning for Marland when it was announced that Callaghan would be making a broadcast that evening. Asked for her reaction, she said: “He wouldn’t be going on television unless he was calling an election,” and ploughed into the day’s campaigning. That evening, Callaghan announced that he saw no need for an election, leaving Mrs Thatcher furious.
When the election did come, in May 1979, Marland took West Gloucestershire from Watkinson by 4,041 votes. In 1987 his majority peaked at 11,499.
Prior to the 1997 election, West Gloucestershire was replaced by a new, less winnable, Forest of Dean constituency. Marland went for it, but as Tony Blair swept to power he lost by 6,343 votes to Labour’s Diana Organ.
In 1999 he stood for the European Parliament in the South West England constituency, but finished last of the eight Conservative candidates, five being elected.
Marland was subsequently vicepresident, then in 2005 president, of the National Conservative Convention, the former National Union which runs the party. As such, he hosted its 2005 Blackpool conference, at which David Cameron overtook David Davis in the race for the leadership.
Paul Marland married first, in 1965, Penelope Barlow. The marriage was dissolved in 1982, and in 1984 he married, secondly, Caroline Rushton. She survives him with a son and two daughters from his first marriage.