Alan Howarth

ALAN HOWARTH spent some years in research, writing and teaching before becoming a senior Conservative Party official during Margaret Thatcher's opposition years. He entered parliament as Conservative MP for Stratford-on-Avon in 1983. He witnessed with deepening unease the widening of social division in the 1980s. He was a government whip and an Education Minister in the late 1980s and early '90s. He illuminates the interaction between Westminster and Whitehall and the processes whereby he was able to extend opportunity in higher education. In 1995, despairing of the Conservative Party's indifference to the social and economic damage caused by its uncritical espousal of neoliberalism, Alan crossed the floor of the House of Commons to join Labour – the first Conservative MP ever to do so. Elected as Labour MP for Newport East in 1997, he served in the Blair administration as Minister for Employment, implementing a more humane and constructive deal for the unemployed; as Minister for Equalities, working to strengthen civil rights for disabled people; as Minister for the Arts, advancing a broad agenda to improve provision for the arts and culture and access to them. In 2005, he was appointed to the House of Lords as Lord Howarth of Newport. Unusually among Labour politicians he supported Brexit. For many years, Alan has campaigned to gain better recognition and policy support for practitioners of the arts in healthcare.