Paul Marland was a diligent, loyal and unambitious Conservative MP who only requested favours from the whips, the guardians of party discipline, once a year. Every January he would ask whether he could be excused from parliament for an annual shoot with his close friends on the island of North Uist in the Outer Hebrides. Because he was so popular and undemanding for the rest of the year, the whips always tried to oblige. MPs who forever ask for time away are considered a nuisance.
On one occasion however, during John Major’s fractious 1992-97 parliament, when the government’s slim majority could never be guaranteed on votes on the Maastricht treaty and other European matters, a key debate was called when Marland was away on his annual jaunt. The whips were calling in ministers and back-bench MPs from abroad and all over the country to safeguard the precious majority.
Marland dutifully phoned in, expecting to be ordered back to base. The whips, who liked him hugely, relented and, to his relief, demanded the return of other more senior figures instead.
A couple of years later a vote that could have brought down the government was due, and as the whips went through the list of potential rebels the name of Marland appeared. As usual the whips discussed whether the malcontents were moveable, and in Marland’s case the answer appeared to be “no”. But remembering their previous dispensations to him, a senior whip rang Marland and asked him if he was really going to rebel. There was a gentle reminder of past favours, and he agreed to swallow his doubts and support Major.
Marland was one of the last country gentleman Tory MPs. He was right of centre, a member of the rightist 92 Group, and had a sizable family farm in the Cotswolds where the traditional country pursuits of hunting, shooting and fishing were followed.
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Like many “knights of the shires” he regarded public service as a duty, and it was at his fourth attempt that he became an MP, gaining the marginal seat of West Gloucestershire in 1979. He served there till 1997 when the seat was abolished and became Forest of Dean. He stood again but lost to Labour’s Diana Organ.
It was the end of what he told friends was a “most pleasant” parliamentary career in which he never sought preferment and instead became a good constituency MP. He had been made a parliamentary private secretary, the lowest and unpaid rung on the ladder, to the Treasury and then the Ministry of Agriculture, where his farming knowledge had been much prized, and he later became chairman of the all-party Commons agriculture select committee.
Paul Marland was born in 1940 to Alexander and Elsa Marland. He was educated at Gordonstoun and Trinity College Dublin, and took over the family farm in 1967, two years after he married Penelope Anne Barlow. They had three children, Lara, Lucinda and Alexander, and the marriage ended in 1982. Marland’s second marriage was to Caroline Ann Rushton in 1984. She became managing director of The Guardian in 1995 and insisted that being married to a Conservative MP was irrelevant to her job of running a left of centre paper. Her business was commercial and there was never any conflict, she said. And she made that point clear by leaving The Guardian on a Friday and helping out in her husband’s constituency over the weekend. Marland was tall and broad-shouldered. With his wife, also tall, they made a striking couple.
In 1994 it was reported that Marland had suffered heavy losses at Lloyd’s, one of 51 Tory MPs who were members of the insurance market. He applied to the Lloyd’s hardship committee to negotiate a settlement but declined to comment on the extent of his losses. He was, however, a fierce critic of Lloyd’s in the House of Commons, claiming that the market was poorly regulated and riddled with fraudulent practices. In one extraordinary late-night Commons speech he alleged that Lloyd’s exploited its investors by insider dealing.
His speech created a storm among fellow Tory MPs and within Lloyd’s. It was one of the rare occasions this amiable politician rocked the boat.
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Paul Marland, politician, was born on March 19, 1940. He died of cancer on April 1, 2021 aged 81