Encyclopedia
David Blunkett is a
British Labour Party politician and has been Member of Parliament for Sheffield Brightside since 1987.
Blind since birth and from a poor family, he rose to became Education Secretary from 1997 to 2001, and then Home Secretary from 2001 to 2004, when he resigned after a scandal. Following the
2005 General Election he was appointed Secretary of State for Work and Pensions but was again forced to resign on 2 November 2005 after a series of reports about his external business interests during his brief time outside the cabinet.
Early life
Born in
Sheffield,
South Yorkshire, Blunkett grew up in poverty after his father was killed following an industrial accident when David was 12 years old. Blind since birth, and educated at schools for the blind in Sheffield and
Shrewsbury, Blunkett's chances in life seemed limited. Following his father's death, he was sent on assessment to the School for the Blind in
Worcester, where he failed to gain entry. His failed assessment is said to be partly deliberate, due to his rebellious nature and dislike of public schools. However, he later attended the Royal National College for the Blind in
Hereford. Indeed, he was apparently told at school that one of his few options in life was to become a
lathe operator. Nevertheless, he won a place at the
University of Sheffield, where one of his lecturers was Bernard Crick, and went on to enter local politics on graduation. He worked as a clerk typist between 1967 and 1969 and as a lecturer in industrial relations and politics between 1973 and 1981.
Rise in politics
Blunkett became the youngest-ever councillor on Sheffield City Council, being elected in 1970 at the age of 22 whilst a teacher. He served on Sheffield City Council from 1970 to 1988, becoming Leader from 1980 to 1987 and on South Yorkshire County Council from 1973 to 1977. This was a time of decline for Sheffield's
steel industry. Conservative MP Irvine Patnick coined the phrase Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire to describe the left-wing politics of its local government; Sheffield was designated as a nuclear-free zone. Blunkett became known as the leader of one of the furthest left of the Labour councils, which was regularly denounced as "loony left" by the newspapers of the right. He built up support within the Labour Party during his time as the council's leader during the 1980s and was elected to the Labour Party's National Executive Committee.
At the
1987 general election he was elected MP for Sheffield Brightside with a large majority in a safe Labour seat. He became a party spokesman on local government, joined the shadow cabinet in 1992 as Shadow Health Secretary and became Shadow Education Secretary in 1994. Combining reforming zeal with social conservatism, he became a favourite of new
party leader Tony Blair.
As Education Secretary
After Labour's landslide victory in the
1997 general election, he became the UK's first blind cabinet minister as Secretary of State for Education and Employment. The role of Education Secretary was a vital one in a government whose
Prime Minister had in 1996 described his priority as "education, education, education" and which had made reductions in school class sizes a pledge. In the event it was
higher education that proved to be the most controversial issue for Blunkett as he moved towards the imposition of tuition fees at
public universities which had previously been free.
As Home Secretary
At the start of the Labour government's second term in 2001, Blunkett was promoted to Home Secretary, fulfilling an ambition of his. Observers saw him as a rival to
Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown's hopes to succeed Blair as the next Labour party leader and potential Prime Minister.
Appearing to be tough on immigration and asylum was important for Blunkett during his time at the
Home Office. In December 2001, he controversially called for immigrants to develop a greater "sense of belonging" to Britain. In April 2002, he proposed new powers which he claimed would curb illegal immigration and unfounded claims for
political asylum.
Meanwhile, his department in Sheffield was accepting immigration applications with only cursory security checks. When a whistle-blower made this public, both the whistle blower and one of Blunkett's subordinates lost their posts but Blunkett survived.
Another controversial area for Blunkett was
civil liberties, which he famously described as "airy fairy".. As Education Secretary, he had repeatedly expressed the intention that, were he to become Home Secretary, he would make the then-incumbent Jack Straw, who had been criticised for being hard-line, seem overly
liberal.
On 15 January 2003, he was at the centre of controversy again when at a gathering of Asian and Black Home Office Employees in London he made a joke: "Colin Jackson succeeded, despite being
Welsh". The comment caused great controversy amongst senior
Welsh Nationalists but the Labour party rallied around Blunkett and the matter was quietly dropped.
In 2003, he announced an extension of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which critics condemned as a "snoopers' charter". His Criminal Justice Act 2003 reduced legal safeguards such as the right to trial by jury and double jeopardy rules. He also attempted to introduce compulsory national identity cards . The aftermath of terrorist attacks in the USA was offered as a justification to pass this controversial legislation, though no compulsion to carry identity cards was planned.
These measures earned him the nickname
Big Blunkett from parts of the
tabloid press, a reference to the Orwellian concept of Big Brother but ironic since he is slight of build.
First resignation
During his time as Home Secretary, Blunkett had a relationship with Kimberly Fortier, the
American-born
publisher of right-wing
magazine The Spectator is a British [i]
...
. The three-year relationship ended acrimoniously in August 2004, with Fortier choosing to return to her husband, Stephen Quinn. Fortier has since reverted to her married name.
Blair regarded it proper for Blunkett to remain Home Secretary while pursuing his
pregnant former lover in the courts to ascertain paternity of her unborn child as is appeared of no relevance to his ministerial position. However, at the end of November 2004, it was alleged that Blunkett abused his position to assist his ex-lover's
filipina nanny, Leoncia "Luz" Casalme, by speeding up her residence visa application and later using his influence to ensure that she successfully obtained an
Austrian
tourist visa. An investigation into these allegations was launched, led by Sir Alan Budd. Shortly before Sir Alan was due to report his findings, an
email emerged headed "no special favours, .. but a bit quicker". Though there was no evidence Blunkett was responsible for the email or its title, he resigned as Home Secretary on 15 December 2004, saying that questions about his honesty were damaging the government. Sir Alan's final verdict, delivered on 21 December 2004, concluded that "I believe I have been able to establish a chain of events linking Blunkett to the change in the decision on Mrs Casalme's application."
Budd admitted that the investigation was "not a straightforward matter", because few involved in it could recall the details. His report says:
I believe there are two broad possibilities: Mr Blunkett was seeking special help for Mrs Quinn's nanny he was raising the case as an example of the poor performance of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate . I do not have direct evidence that allows me to choose between the two possibilities.
A
fax from Blunkett's office to the IND had not been found during the inquiry but Sir Alan found no evidence of an attempt to conceal or destroy evidence. Following the report's publication, he told reporters: "I have been unable to link Mr Blunkett to the sending of faxes to the IND. There must have been such a link but I have been unable to discover what its nature was."
Blunkett resigned as Home Secretary after being told in advance of Budd's findings. He said: "I want to make it clear that I fully accept the findings of Sir Alan's report, where his findings differ from my recollections this is simply due to failure on my part to recall details."
On the day that Sir Alan delivered his report, a parliamentary standards committee led by Sir Philip Mawer also upheld a complaint against Blunkett for giving Mrs Quinn a taxpayer-funded railway ticket to the value of
£179. Blunkett had already admitted that he had broken the rules, saying that he had made an honest mistake, and repaid the sum in question.
Blunkett was not helped by a series of stinging criticisms of his Cabinet colleagues, made by Blunkett to his biographer, which became public days before he resigned. His increasingly public paternity battle was also believed by many to be harming his position. However, many believed that he would be able to salvage his political career.
Return to the Cabinet
Following the
2005 general election Blunkett was returned to the cabinet as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, where he faced a growing pensions crisis. Characteristically he was already at work on the morning of Saturday 7 May, a matter of hours after his appointment. He was to be seen the previous day anxiously awaiting a telephone call from the PM during the centenary celebrations at the
University of Sheffield, to which he was invited as a speaker. There he was heard to apologise for the woes of student fees he had imposed on the university; he himself only wanted to apply them to Oxbridge, but had been overruled.
Further political trouble and second resignation
In late October 2005, David Blunkett began to feel the pressure of the media for a second time. Two weeks before the
2005 general election he took up a directorship in a company called DNA Bioscience and bought £15 000 of shares in the company.
On 31 October 2005 Mr Blunkett was asked to explain why he had not consulted the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments regarding the directorship. Having placed the shares into an independent trust, "Mr Blunkett said he had asked his three grown-up sons from his first marriage to authorise trustees to "dispose of" the shares. They agreed to the request."
Mr Blunkett's political opponents claimed that a conflict of interest was created by him having been director of and holding shares in a company proposing to bid for government contracts to provide paternity tests to the
Child Support Agency – part of the Department for Work and Pensions, of which he was Secretary of State.
An investigation by Cabinet secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell – asked for by Prime Minister Tony Blair – found that although Blunkett had not broken the Ministerial Code by becoming a director of or buying shares in the company, he should have consulted the Advisory Committee before doing so.
However, it was revealed on 1st November that Lord Mayhew of Twysden, who chairs the Advisory Committee, had sent three letters to Blunkett reminding him to seek the committee's advice on his involvement with DNA Bioscience, which he ignored. On the same day, Sir Alistair Graham, chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said Blunkett
had breached ministerial rules.
Blunkett declared that he would not be resigning saying to a newspaper, "I have done nothing wrong." A statement by Downing Street said that the Prime Minister did not believe that Blunkett's mistake should prevent him from carrying out his job.
It also became public that Mr Blunkett had taken two other paid jobs, one with the international charity
World ORT, and the other with Indepen Consulting, without seeking advice from the Advisory Committee.
On 2 November, Lord Nolan, a former Chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life and architect of the code of conduct, was reported as having said in an interview with the
Yorkshire Post, "I think he's more or less admitted that he should have followed the rules. But I think it's the fault of the Government that he has been allowed to see if he can get away with it." Lord Nolan was reported to have continued: "Blair should insist on Ministers all round obeying the rules. I think that if anyone breaks the rules they should be disciplined, otherwise there's no point having the rules." Lord Nolan agreed that this meant that Blunkett should have been dismissed or demoted by the Prime Minister.
On the same day, a scheduled appearance before a House of Commons Select Committee was cancelled at the last minute and Blunkett was summoned to a meeting at
Number 10. Later that morning, a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair confirmed Mr Blunkett had resigned at the meeting, stating that his position had become untenable. In a statement, Mr Blunkett claimed that the "lies" of those such as
Max Clifford would one day be "dealt with".
John Hutton was appointed as David Blunkett's successor that day. Blunkett's children's trustees decided not to sell the shares in DNA Bioscience after all, in December it was reported that the company faces insolvency, resulting in Blunkett's shares being worth very little.
Despite his resignation from the cabinet in November, Blunkett continued to enjoy rent-free accommodation in Belgravia, London, at tax-payers' expense until he found new accommodation in mid-March 2006. He also rents a cottage on the estate of
Chatsworth House. The controversy gained further press coverage later in 2006, when Tory MP Philip Davies asked when Blunkett was due to vacate the residence. Ironically this was published only the day before the same newspaper broke the story about him vacating the house, which will now stand empty and be maintained by the government at the tax-payers' expense until another cabinet minister requires an official residence.
Private life
Blunkett divorced his wife, by whom he had three sons, in 1990. In 2004, with news of his affair with Kimberly Quinn, Blunkett asserted that he was the father of Mrs Quinn's two-year-old son, William and also perhaps of her then-unborn child. Mrs Quinn denied this, claiming that both children were her husband's. In late 2004, Blunkett began a legal challenge to gain access to William. In late December 2004, as was widely reported in the media, DNA tests confirmed that Mrs Quinn's two-year-old son, William, was Blunkett's child. On 5 March 2005 it was confirmed that Blunkett was not the father of Quinn's newborn son, Lorcan.
Blunkett's
guide dogs – Ruby, Teddy, Offa, Lucy and most recently Sadie – have become familiar characters at
Westminster, inspiring occasional witty comments from Blunkett and his fellow MPs on both sides of the house. In one memorable incident, Lucy vomited in Parliament during a speech by opposition member
David Willetts. On occasion when Blunkett is being guided by Tony Blair the wry comment has been made: "who is guiding whom?" However, Blunkett's blindness does not generally arouse much comment.
In 2005 there was more speculation about Mr Blunkett's private life, this time regarding a young woman and for not disclosing free membership to an exclusive London nightclub, Annabel's. The matter with the young women has been cleared up following a full apology from the newspaper who printed the original story and the membership at the nightclub has been resigned.
David Blunkett in popular culture
As a result of David Blunkett's affair with Kimberly Quinn he has been portrayed three times in dramatic or musical form. Along with the other recent dalliances associated with
The Spectator, Blunkett was featured in
Who's The Daddy?, a play by
Toby Young and Lloyd Evans, the magazine's theatre critics, which ran at The King's Head Theatre in the Summer of 2005. The satirist Alistair Beaton wrote the television film
A Very Social Secretary, for
Channel 4, which was screened in October 2005. Finally,
Blunkett – The Musical toured the
UK during the course of Spring 2005. This work featured music by the American composer Mary Jo Paranzino; there is also a book by
The Times is a national newspaper [i] published daily in the United Kingdom [i] since 1785, and unde ...
journalist Ginny Dougary. In 2005
BBC Radio 4 had a series of comic programmes called
A 15 Minute Musical, the first of which was based on David Blunkett's affair with Kimberley Quinn.
A character based on Blunkett appeared in the Canadian cartoon series
Bromwell High, and a club-night called Electric Blunkett, held at the Sheffield Blind Institute, began in the summer of 2005, although its name was swiftly changed to Electric Blanket. Linda Smith once described Blunkett as "Satan's bearded folk singer". He is the topic of a song by Manchester group The Fall called Blindness.
References
Bibliography
- David Blunkett by Stephen Pollard ISBN 0-340-82534-0
- Civil Society and David Blunkett: Lawyers Vs. Politicians by Kenneth Minogue ISBN 1-903386-22-5
- Politics and Progress: Renewing Democracy and a Civil Society by David Blunkett ISBN 1-84275-024-0
- On a Clear Day by David Blunkett and Alex MacCormick ISBN 1-85479-741-7
- Democracy in Crisis: The Town Halls Respond by David Blunkett and Keith Jackson ISBN 0-7012-0777-9
External links
Resignation as Home Secretary
Further political trouble
Pay off for leaving the Cabinet – then coming back...
Paternity battle
