Gerard Folliott Vaughan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sir Gerard Folliot Vaughan (June 11, 1923 – July 29, 2003) was a psychiatrist and UK politician, who reached ministerial rank during the Thatcher administration. He was perhaps most famous for losing a battle of wills with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament's Joan Ruddock over the government's grant to the Citizens Advice Bureau, a battle that cost him his government post and permanently curtailed his political ambitions.

[edit] Biography

Gerard Vaughan was the son of a sugar planter, and was born and educated in what is now Mozambique. During the Second World War, his father joined the Royal Air Force as a pilot, and was killed. Gerard studied medicine in London, attending London University, Guy's Hospital, and the Maudsley Hospital. He eventually became the consultant in charge of the Bloomfield Clinic at Guy's Hospital, serving in that role from 1958 to 1979.

Vaughan became involved in Conservative politics in the mid-1950s, serving as an alderman on the then London County Council. He stood for the constituency of Poplar, in South London, in the 1955 general election but was defeated. In the 1970 general election he won the Reading constituency from Labour. Thereafter he represented the constituencies of Reading South and Reading East until his retirement from politics prior to the 1997 general election.

During the government of Edward Heath, Vaughan served as a government whip and as parliamentary private secretary to Francis Pym, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. When Margaret Thatcher became Conservative leader, after Heath's defeat in the general elections of February 1974 and October 1974, Vaughan became her health spokesman. He became the health minister, in Patrick Jenkin's Department of Health and Social Security, after the Conservatives won the 1979 general election.

Vaughan did not get on with his new boss, Norman Fowler, who replaced Jenkin in 1981. In 1982, Vaughan was transferred to become consumer affairs minister. When he discovered that the then chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Joan Ruddock, was also head of his local Citizen's Advice Bureau (CAB), he threatened to halve the government's contribution to CABs across the country. The uproar that followed from the thousands of voluntary workers in the CAB and their Conservative MPs forced Vaughan to retreat during an angry Commons debate.

Vaughan was dropped from the government in 1983 and given a knighthood in 1984. From the back benches he served on the Education Select Committee from 1983 to 1993, and the Science and Technology Select Committee from 1993 to 1997. In his Reading constituency he fought against plans, sponsored by Nicholas Ridley, to build housing in Berkshire's diminishing green belt.