John Prescott
John Leslie Prescott, Baron Prescott was a British politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and as First Secretary of State from 2001 to 2007.
A member of the Labour Party, he was Member of Parliament for Kingston upon Hull East for 40 years, from 1970 to 2010. He was often seen as the political link to the working class in a Labour Party increasingly led by modernising, middle-class professionals such as Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, and developed a reputation as a key conciliator in the often fractious relationship between Blair and Gordon Brown.
Born in Prestatyn, Wales, in his youth Prescott failed the eleven-plus entrance exam for grammar school and worked as a ship's steward and trade union activist. He went on to graduate from Ruskin College and the University of Hull. In the 1994 Labour leadership election, he stood for both the leadership and deputy leadership, winning election to the latter office. He was appointed deputy prime minister following Labour's victory in the 1997 election, with an expanded brief as Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions until 2001, then subsequently as First Secretary of State until 2007. In June 2007, he resigned as deputy prime minister, coinciding with Blair's resignation as prime minister. Following an election within the Labour Party, he was replaced as deputy leader by Harriet Harman.
After retiring as a member of Parliament at the 2010 general election, Prescott was made a life peer and sat in the House of Lords until 2024. He stood unsuccessfully as the Labour candidate in the 2012 election to be the first police and crime commissioner for Humberside Police. Prescott resigned from the Privy Council in 2013 in protest against delays to the introduction of press regulation, of which he had become a proponent. In February 2015, he briefly returned to politics as an adviser to Labour leader Ed Miliband.
Early life
Prescott was born in Prestatyn, Wales, on 31 May 1938 to John Herbert Prescott and Phyllis,. Prescott's father was a railway signalman, Justice of the Peace, and Labour councillor. His family won a competition to find the "most typical British family of 1951". In 2009, he said: "I've always felt very proud of Wales and being Welsh ... I was born in Wales, went to school in Wales and my mother was Welsh. I'm Welsh. It's my place of birth, my country." He left Wales in 1942 at the age of four and was brought up initially in Brinsworth, Rotherham, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. He attended Brinsworth Manor School, where in 1949 he sat but failed the 11-Plus examination to attend Rotherham Grammar School. Shortly afterwards, his family moved to Upton-by-Chester, and he attended Grange Secondary Modern School in nearby Ellesmere Port.Prescott became a steward and waiter in the Merchant Navy, working for Cunard, and was a left-wing union activist. Among the passengers was a former prime minister, Anthony Eden, recuperating after his resignation over the Suez Crisis. Prescott reportedly described Eden as a "real gentleman". Apart from serving Eden, who stayed in his cabin much of the time, Prescott also won several boxing contests, at which Eden presented the prizes. He married Pauline "Tilly" Tilston at Upton Church in Chester on 11 November 1961. He then went to Ruskin College, which specialises in courses for union officials, where he gained a diploma in economics and politics in 1965. In 1968, he obtained a BSc degree in economics and economic history from the University of Hull.
Member of Parliament
Prescott returned to the National Union of Seamen as a full-time official before being elected to the House of Commons as Member of Parliament for Kingston upon Hull East in 1970, succeeding Commander Harry Pursey, the retiring Labour MP, and defeating the Conservative challenger Norman Lamont. He had previously attempted to become MP for Southport in 1966, but came in second place, approximately 9,500 votes behind the Conservative candidate. From July 1975 to 1979, he concurrently served as a Member of the European Parliament and Leader of the Labour Group, when its members were nominated by the national Parliaments. In 1988 Prescott and Eric Heffer challenged Roy Hattersley for the deputy leadership of the party, but Hattersley was re-elected as deputy leader. Prescott stood again in the 1992 deputy leadership election, following Hattersley's retirement, but lost to Margaret Beckett.Prescott held various posts in Labour's shadow cabinet, but his career was secured by an impassioned closing speech in the debate at the Labour Party Conference in 1993 on the introduction of "one member, one vote" for the selection and reselection of Labour Parliamentary candidates that helped swing the vote in favour of this reform. In 1994 Prescott was a candidate in the party leadership election that followed the death of leader John Smith, standing for the positions of both leader and deputy leader. Tony Blair won the leadership contest, with Prescott being elected deputy leader.
Deputy prime minister
With the formation of a Labour government in 1997, Prescott was made deputy prime minister and given a very large portfolio as the head of the newly created Department for Environment, Transport and the Regions. In the United Kingdom, the title of deputy prime minister is used only occasionally, and confers no constitutional powers. The deputy prime minister stands in when the prime minister is unavailable, most visibly at Prime Minister's Questions, and Prescott attended various feads of government meetings on behalf of Prime Minister Tony Blair.Since the position of deputy prime minister draws no salary, Prescott's remuneration was based on his position as Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions until 2001. This "super department" was then broken up, with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for Transport established as separate entities. Prescott, still deputy prime minister, was also given the largely honorific title of First Secretary of State. In July 2001 an Office of the Deputy Prime Minister was created to administer the areas remaining under his responsibility. This was originally part of the Cabinet Office, but became a department in its own right in May 2002, when it absorbed some of the responsibilities of the former Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions. The ODPM had responsibility for local and regional government, housing, communities and the fire service.
Environment, Transport and the Regions
Environment
The UK played a major role in the successful negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and Prescott led the UK delegation at the discussions. In May 2006, in recognition of his work in delivering the Kyoto Treaty, Tony Blair asked him to work with the Foreign Secretary and the Environment Secretary on developing the Government's post-Kyoto agenda.As minister on 24 August 1999, Prescott made regulations banning the use of chrysotile asbestos, which resulted in a complete ban on the use of any products containing asbestos in the United Kingdom from 24 November 1999.
Integrated transport policy
On coming to office, Prescott pursued an integrated public transport policy. On 6 June 1997, he said: "I will have failed if in five years time there are not...far fewer journeys by car. It's a tall order but I urge you to hold me to it." However, by June 2002, car traffic was up by 7%. This prompted Friends of the Earth's Tony Bosworth to say "By its own test, Government transport policy has failed".Prescott successfully focused attention on the role of car usage in the bigger environmental picture, and the need for effective public transport alternatives if car volume was to be reduced. The subsequent debate on road pricing evolved from his policy. A contrast was highlighted between Prescott's transport brief and an incident, in 1999, when an official chauffeur-driven car was used to transport Prescott and his wife from their hotel to the venue of the Labour Party Conference, where Prescott gave a speech on how to encourage the use of public transport. Prescott explained, "Because of the security reasons for one thing and second, my wife doesn't like to have her hair blown about. Have you got another silly question?" Prescott was fined for speeding on four occasions.
Rail regulation
Prescott had a stormy relationship with the privatisation of the railway industry. He had vigorously opposed the privatisation of the industry while the Labour Party was in opposition, and disliked the party's policy, established in 1996 just before the flotation of Railtrack on the London Stock Exchange, of committing to renationalise the industry only when resources allowed, which he saw as meaning that it would never be done. Reluctantly, he supported the alternative policy, produced by shadow transport secretary Clare Short, that the industry should be subjected to closer regulation by the to-be-created Strategic Rail Authority in the case of the passenger train operators, and the Rail Regulator in the case of the monopoly and dominant elements in the industry, principally Railtrack. The policy was spelled out in some detail in the Labour Party's statement in the June 1996 prospectus for the sale of Railtrack shares, and was widely regarded as having depressed the price of the shares.In 1998, Prescott was criticised by Transport Minister John Reid for his statement – at the Labour Party conference that year – that the privatised railway was a "national disgrace", despite receiving a standing ovation from the Labour Party audience. The companies said that they had had some considerable successes in cutting costs and generating new revenues in the short time since their transfer to private sector hands, and that the criticisms were premature and unfair.
In that speech, Prescott also announced that he would be taking a far tougher line with the companies, and to that end he would be having a "spring clean" of the industry. In July 1998 Prescott published a transport White Paper stating that the rail industry needed an element of stability and certainty if it was to plan its activities effectively.
In February 1999, the regulation of the passenger rail operators fell to Sir Alastair Morton, who Prescott announced would be appointed as chairman of the Strategic Rail Authority, which would take over from the Director of Passenger Rail Franchising whose office would be wound up. In July 1999, the new Rail Regulator appointed by Prescott was Tom Winsor. They shared Prescott's view that the railway industry needed a considerable shake-up in its institutional, operational, engineering and economic matrix to attract and retain private investment and enable the companies within it to become strong, competent and successful.