From Pirate Radio to Parliament via Moscow
Reproduced with kind permission of 'Staffordshire Life' Magazine
I guess my entry into the House of Commons came from an unorthodox route. While most MPs have been councillors, I had not. While most MPs were practising lawyers, teachers, or trade union officials, I was not. Whether that is an advantage or not, only time will tell.
My education was conventional enough to begin with. Grammar school in Brighton, A levels in Pure Maths Applied Maths and Physics. I was good at languages at school and enjoyed history too. I resent to this day a schooling system in England which requires children to select just a few subjects in which to specialise at the age of 15. They have a far superior system in Scotland where entrants to university have to pass Highers in five or six subjects.
At university, I read law and economics and used my interest in mathematics to take a postgraduate degree in econometrics: economic forecasting (which taught me that an economics forecast is as reliable as one of the weather variety). While at university, I put together a consortium to apply for the commercial radio franchise for Brighton. It included a number of groups ranging from the local newspaper to Brighton Marina (the biggest man-made marina in Europe). Our President was Dame Vera Lynn. While trying to determine what equipment to purchase, it became evident that all the available studio systems had been designed by engineers with little idea of how programmes are actually made. (I should add, that while at university I freelanced for BBC Radio News as a journalist and with 'pirate' radio so I had some experience of operating equipment for myself).
So, a former engineering colleague from the BBC and I decided to manufacture broadcast mixers and the associated equipment and offer an installation service for the complete system. Originally we planned just to provide this service to commercial radio stations in the United Kingdom, but the Icelandic State Broadcasting Service also liked the look of us and the company grew rather more rapidly than we had intended! Having installed the studio systems in Reykjavik, the Nordic Broadcasting Council had an annual conference in Iceland and this lead to further orders throughout Scandinavia. Meanwhile, the BBC decided they liked the look of us too. We decided that my business partner would concentrate on engineering and servicing the BBC while I would concentrate on long-term corporate planning and negotiating with the larger independent radio stations and overseas broadcasters.
The 1980s were an exciting time for me. I travelled the globe and helped re-equip and set up radio stations from Botswana to the Arctic Circle. I had a particularly interesting time in the Soviet Union. Gorbachev was introducing perestroikah and I was brought into train the journalists and plan the re-equipping of the studios. I was a frequent visitor to the Soviet Union then. My main liaison was the Head of Radio Studio Planning - a tall young man who has since visited me in London and in Lichfield - who, at that time, was also a reserve Colonel in a KGB Signals Regiment! Without going into detail, certain elements of the British Embassy in Moscow were interested...............
But by 1990, both my partner and I were interested in selling out our business. By then our business had grown and we had clients in 48 countries round the world - most of whom I had visited to negotiate the contracts. On July 31st 1991, after nine months of negotiation, we sold our company to an American corporation. By one of the greatest coincidences in my life, after two weeks of interviews, on July 31st 1991 at around 8pm at the Staffordshire County Showground, I was selected by the Conservatives to stand for the Parliamentary seat of Mid Staffordshire and I moved up to Lichfield.
I was duly elected in the April 1992 election and after a boundary change, which did not help my chances (!), I was re-elected last year for the new Parliamentary seat of Lichfield.
Being an MP is now a very different life. Very different from being in business or being businesslike! My favourite activity is my constituency work. I like meeting people, I'm a fairly informal character (I've found that doing my shopping in Safeways dressed casually, more people come up and say 'hello' than when I'm wearing a jacket and tie), Lichfield where I live is a beautiful City, and I think I am effective (because I run a professional office) in doing constituency work.
In the House of Commons, I serve on the Culture Media and Sport Select Committee by virtue of my previous work. The Department is responsible for broadcasting and the film industry. By a huge irony, apparently pointed out by the Prime Minister at one of his luvvy love-ins at Number 10, I wrote the tax change recommendations in 1996 to strengthen the film industry and which the present Government implemented in the 1997 budget! I put it down to the fact that while I was in the Treasury for just over a year before the last election, I did a good job selling the idea to the civil servants. Sadly, I was less effective when it came to the Chancellor!
I have adapted quickly to Opposition. It has enabled me to concentrate back on constituency work and to do some interesting things which I couldn't find time for before: like joining the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme and becoming a Royal Marine !
Although I am on the 'Culture Committee', I also am very involved in economics (I've had to remember some of my university work) and trade and industry issues. When I was setting up the radio stations, I became a Fellow of the Institution of Electrical Engineers and am a Chartered Engineer. (I am very proud that my two sponsors were the Chief Engineer of the BBC World Service and the Director of Engineering of the Independent Broadcasting Authority - you can't get better than that). So I also am involved in engineering matters too. It's pretty sad that out of 659 MPs, only seven are engineers! And the women think they are underrepresented?
Parliament is a strange, but exciting place. The Sunday Times said that I was one of the four most active MPs in the last Parliament. I hope to keep up that record.
