British life peer and crossbench member of the House of Lords, Elspeth Morton Howe, a.k.a Lady Howe of Idlicote, has died on Tuesday night after a battle with cancer. She was aged 90.
Advertisement
“It is with great sadness that the Howe family announces the death of Baroness Elspeth Howe of Idlicote, widow of the late Lord Geoffrey Howe of Aberavon, at her home in Idlicote, Warwickshire, late last night, aged 90, after a brave battle with cancer,” the statement read.
Elspeth married Geoffrey Howe when she was 21.
When Geoffrey was selected as the Conservative parliamentary candidate for the hotly contested safe seat of Reigate,
Before the 1970 election, Elspeth told the selection conference that MPs “need slightly more love and attention than most other breeds of husband”.
Julian Critchley, later himself a Tory MP but reporting the event as a journalist, described her contribution as unquestionably the best speech of the evening.
Advertisement
All her life she was a committeewoman, most notably chairing the Broadcasting Standards Commission from 1997 until 1999 and the Broadcasting Standards Council for four years before that.
Her career was garlanded with honors, and in 2001 she became Lady Howe of Idlicote in the first list of “people’s peers”. She and her husband – who had become Lord Howe of Aberavon in 1992 – were among the few couples to sit in the Lords each in their own right.
She was committed to public service, in particular to improving educational opportunities for girls and women, and to securing equality at work for women.
Her first important public appointment was as the first deputy chair, effectively representing the Conservative party, on the newly established Equal Opportunities Commission, set up by the then Labour government in 1975 to enforce the Sex Discrimination Act passed that year.
Leave a Reply