Bob Dunn

Hard-working Conservative MP

Robert John Dunn, politician: born Swinton, Lancashire 14 July 1946; senior buyer, J. Sainsbury 1973-79; MP (Conservative) for Dartford 1979-97; Parliamentary Under- Secretary of State, Department of Education and Science 1983-88; married 1976 Janet Wall (two sons); died 24 April 2003.

Bob Dunn was the popular and hard-working Conservative MP for Dartford in Kent from 1979 to 1997, who served five years as a junior minister in the Department of Education and Science. He was dropped from the Government in July 1988 after making public his anger at Nicholas Ridley's decision not to allow building on semi-derelict land bordering the Thames in his constituency.

It was not the first time he had transgressed. The Chief Whip had wanted him to be sacked three years earlier when he suggested the re- examination of the voucher system in the course of his contribution to a Cambridge symposium where his principal theme was the denationalisation of the education system. Since his ministerial chief, Sir Keith Joseph, had earlier rejected educational vouchers as administratively impracticable, this may have been unwise. However, he had a powerful protectress in the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who favoured vouchers herself.

There was a widespread belief that, when Chris Patten leapfrogged Dunn to become Minister of State and effectively deputy to Joseph in 1985, it was the direct result of this "indiscretion". Bob Dunn was unrepentant. He had gathered around himself a group of unofficial advisers known as "Dunn's dragoons" who shared his convictions about the importance of parental choice and the failings of the comprehensive system.

When Joseph began to indicate that he wished to leave the Government, Dunn was reported to be "active in support of Rhodes Boyson's claims to succeed Joseph", believing his fellow Lancastrian, whom he had first met as the candidate for Eccles, to be the right man to drive through the educational objectives he favoured. Instead, in May 1986, the job went to Kenneth Baker.

But Baker took up the paper Dunn had written on City Technical Colleges in 1985, following his earlier advocacy of more vocational- technological-business oriented schools. CTCs were a major challenge to the LEA monopoly of state education and Dunn was delighted when (with the full co-operation of Kent County Council) Sir Geoffrey Leigh funded one in his own constituency.

Many of the features of a voucher scheme, too, found a place in Baker's Education Act, which, with considerable assistance from Dunn in committee, reached the statute book in 1988, principally open enrolment, the devolution of budgets to schools, and the principle that money follows the child. Although Dunn did not live to see a full-blown voucher scheme in Britain, they were put into operation successfully in other countries, while the Blair government took up another suggestion that Dunn had made, that there should be more specialised comprehensive schools. Privately he would have preferred an extension of the grammar-school system, but he recognised that it was unlikely to happen.

Robert John Dunn was the son of a social worker in Salford and was the product of a state education. He had "failed" his 11 plus, but that did not prevent him from going on to take a BA in politics at Manchester Polytechnic and a management diploma at Brighton. He was later to start, but not complete, a diploma in marketing management at Salford University – it was his statement that he had been educated inter alia at Salford University that later drew criticism that he had falsified his educational qualifications and led to an offer to resign in 1986, an offer rightly rejected by the Prime Minister.

Dunn joined Sainsbury's as a management trainee in 1973 and subsequently worked for them as a buyer. He had already begun his political career in Eccles, where he became chairman of the Young Conservatives in 1968, deputy 1972, and then vice-chairman of the constituency association in 1973, and succeeded Rhodes Boyson as the parliamentary candidate, contesting the seat unsuccessfully in February and October 1974. He was elected to Southwark Borough Council in May 1974 and was selected to fight Dartford in December 1975.

He captured the seat by 1,342 votes in May 1979 and with the help of boundary changes built his majority to the point where he could normally have expected to survive an election defeat for his party. However he was swept away in the disastrous 1997 election and, although he became a Dartford Borough Councillor in 1999, could not regain the parliamentary seat in 2001.

Early in his parliamentary career, he had established his right-wing credentials by calling for secret ballots before strike action and pressing Jim Prior for action on closed shops. He was also a critic of the rating system and urged the privatisation of local government services, an idea that he was quick to further when he became schools minister and school cleaning was put out to tender. He had been appointed PPS to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Education and Science, Rhodes Boyson, in 1981 and subsequently became PPS to the Paymaster General and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Cecil Parkinson, in 1982.

He succeeded Rhodes Boyson as Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Education in June 1983. Despite his advocacy of technological education, Dunn believed himself to be, and was, a teacher-oriented minister – "Without good teachers, all the rest is nothing," he declared – and he was later to insist that the two most important people in schools were the head and the caretaker. The product of a Christian education, he was a staunch supporter of the daily religious assembly. He also believed strongly that children from ethnic minorities needed to be taught English and in English the history and customs of Britain and the place of Christianity in British society.

It was soon apparent to all that he had little time for the views of the school inspectorate and none at all for the progressive "trendies" who had dominated education in the 1960s and 1970s. Instead he put his trust in parents and parental choice, was a staunch defender of both independent schools and grammar schools, favoured the extension of the assisted places scheme and, under the warlike slogan "Second Front Now", called unsuccessfully for local authorities to consider the reintroduction of the selective system, which he knew found support from a majority of the public.

After losing office in 1988, he was elected to the executive of the 1922 Committee and retained his place until 1997. He was active in the 1992 and Selsdon groups and took an interest in a range of other party committees, including social security and later transport. He chaired the Social Security Committee in 1988-89 and was Vice-Chairman of the backbench Party Organisation Committee, 1989-97. From 1991 until 1997 he served on the Parliamentary Select Committee handling selection.

Both before and after his time as an MP, he retained an active interest in all that pertained to Kent and more particularly Dartford, and took a major interest in the routing of the Channel Tunnel rail links. Good-humoured and often witty, he was liked as well as respected for his total honesty, robust common sense and care for his constituents.

John Barnes