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Roger Freeman, Major-era minister who handled defence procurement and rail privatisation details
Lord Freeman, who has died aged 83, was the least-known of the seven members of John Major's Cabinet who lost their seats as New Labour swept to power in 1997; he had been Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and minister for the public service (effectively Lord High Everything Else) for almost two years.
Previously Roger Freeman had impressed Major as Minister of State for Transport – piloting through the Bill privatising the railways – and for Defence Procurement.
An accountant turned banker, he had helped set up Lehman Brothers' London office in 1972, and after losing his seat chaired the UK operations of the French electronic and defence contractor Thales.
Hardworking, with an eye for detail and a certain stiffness in manner, he was a safe pair of hands in a government running out of talent and steam. As right-hand man to the deputy prime minister Michael Heseltine, he took charge of eliminating red tape, (IT and communications), the cull of elderly cattle when BSE kicked in, and non-co-operation with the EU when it banned British beef. He was the first Cabinet minister to publicise his email address.
Freeman readily acknowledged his relative lack of profile. Meeting commuters in 1991 wearing his Citizen's Charter badge, he admitted: 'Some people mistook me for a ticket collector.' Challenged on television about the unapproachability of 'politicians in grey suits', he retorted: 'I can't just start turning up to work in a jumper.'
Much of his value to Major lay in his ability to lower the political temperature. It was Freeman who was chosen in 1996 to wind up the highly charged debate on the Scott Report into ministerial connivance at the shipment of military equipment to Saddam Hussein, in which two ministers – Sir Nicholas Lyell and William Waldegrave – came within a whisker of being forced out.
Weeks later, he took a contentious divorce reform Bill through the Commons after the Lords forced the government to accept pension-splitting when a marriage was dissolved.
Yet Freeman, like so many politicians, would be haunted by one casual remark: his suggestion in 1992 that the railways should operate two classes of train, 'cheap and cheerful' for typists and the like, and more luxurious for those paying more. He recanted after a howl of protest from commuters, but the phrase stuck.
Roger Norman Freeman was born at Neston, Cheshire, on May 27 1942, the son of Norman Freeman and the former Marjorie Ellis. He was educated at Whitgift in south London and Balliol College, Oxford, where he read PPE and in 1964 was president of the university Conservative Association.
Articled to Binder Hamlyn, he qualified in 1969 as a chartered accountant. That year he moved to Lehman Brothers, working in New York and London and becoming a partner; he stayed until appointed a minister.
Treasurer of the Bow Group in 1967, Freeman fought Don Valley in 1979. He was elected for Kettering in Margaret Thatcher's landslide of 1983 when the sitting Labour MP had retired; boundary changes helped him take the seat by 6,583 votes over the SDP. He began by calling a public meeting to ascertain constituents' views on capital punishment, before voting against it.
At Westminster, he joined the Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee; was the only newly elected Tory to vote against rate capping; opposed Sir Keith Joseph's increase in the parental contribution for student grants; and rebelled to support letting councils keep the proceeds from selling houses to tenants. He favoured joining the European Monetary System, and despite strong liberal instincts attacked the Church of England's 'worn-out socialist dogma' on the inner cities.
In 1986 Mrs Thatcher made Freeman Under-Secretary for the Armed Forces. Much of his time was spent on complaints that Army recruits were being bullied; he announced measures to tackle it after a campaign by the Labour MP Jack Ashley. Freeman's initiative included making the forces more diverse; he agreed to the ethnic monitoring of recruits, but insisted positive discrimination would be illegal.
Reflecting a more open attitude within the MoD, Freeman approved the BBC's showing a documentary by Duncan Campbell on a defective national defence control system. He also righted a long-standing wrong by apologising to Major Peter Cory for the department's repeated false assertions to prospective employers that he had left the Army with a criminal record.
In December 1988 Freeman moved sideways to Health, when Edwina Currie was forced to resign after stating that most of Britain's egg production was affected by salmonella. Mrs Thatcher asked him to investigate the extent to which the mentally ill were being dumped on the streets as their hospitals closed. Freeman also attacked the BMA for whipping up 'unfounded fears' about NHS reform.
In May 1990 he was promoted to Minister of State for Transport. Discontent among commuters was worrying Mrs Thatcher, and he toured the rail network meeting them. Moving his office to Docklands for a week in response to complaints about 'shambolic' operation of the Docklands Light Railway, he transferred it from London Transport to the London Docklands Development Corporation.
Under Major, rail privatisation came on to the agenda and Freeman handled the details: spelling out how responsibility for the track and train operation would be separated, and supervising Railtrack's emergence from British Rail. He also opened the bidding for consortia to construct and operate the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (HS1). He was made a privy counsellor in 1993.
In July 1994 he returned to the MoD as Minister of State for procurement. He was there only a year, but it was a busy one. He announced an end to the 'fratricidal' policy of competition between more than one British contractor in the same field, and raised no objection to GEC taking over the naval shipbuilder VSEL; it eventually became part of BAE Systems.
After a damning report from the Health and Safety Executive, Freeman brought the MoD's atomic weapons facilities under the same safety regime as nuclear power stations. He launched an international competition to replace the RAF's ageing Nimrod reconnaissance aircraft, and, most controversially, confirmed that Rosyth naval base would close.
When Major reshuffled his team in July 1995, having defeated John Redwood's leadership challenge, he brought Freeman into the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Much of his work concerned the machinery of government: privatising HM Stationery Office, and proposing a nationwide network of public computer kiosks.
Freeman suggested halving the membership of the Commons, with MPs retiring at 60, and tried to water down the Government's response to the Nolan Report on 'sleaze', so ministers found to have deliberately misled the House would 'offer their resignations' rather than go automatically.
At the 1997 election he lost Kettering to Labour by just 189 votes; his Cabinet colleagues Michael Portillo, Malcolm Rifkind, Ian Lang, Michael Forsyth, Tony Newton and Waldegrave were also defeated. He received a life peerage in Major's resignation honours, and William Hague made him a party vice-chairman: Freeman served until 2001.
In the Lords, he chaired the Select Committee on the European internal market and served on the Science and Technology Committee, the Committee on the Speakership and the EU Committee on defence, foreign affairs and international development. He retired from the Lords in 2020.
Freeman became a partner in PwC, and Thales UK, from 1999, was the highest-profile of several companies he chaired. He was president of the British International Freight Association from 1999 to 2002.
Roger Freeman married, in 1969, the architectural historian Jennifer Watson. She survives him, with their son and daughter.
Roger Freeman, born May 27 1942, died June 2 2025
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