Owen Paterson’s resignation as MP for North Shropshire leaves empty a seat he has held for 24 years, and follows a traumatic period in which he lost his wife of 40 years to suicide.
His resignation statement said he would “remain a public servant but outside the cruel world of politics” and that his children had asked him “to leave politics altogether, for [his own] sake as well as theirs”.
Born in Whitchurch, Shropshire, Paterson read history at Cambridge University and pursued a career in the leather industry. He joined his family’s business, the British Leather Company, in 1979 and went on to become president of the European Tanners’ Confederation.
His move into politics began when he contested the Wrexham seat in the 1992 general election, losing to the Labour incumbent. He won the North Shropshire seat at the 1997 general election with a majority of 2,195, taking over from John Biffen, the former Conservative cabinet minister of the Thatcher era.
His majority increased at each subsequent election, rising to 22,949 in 2019. That year he took 62.7% of the vote, compared with 22% for Labour and 10% for the Liberal Democrats.
Paterson has held a number of senior roles throughout his political career, including secretary of state for Northern Ireland. He oversaw the release of the Saville report on the events of Bloody Sunday, which led to David Cameron as prime minister issuing a formal apology. Paterson is president of the Northern Ireland Conservatives.
In the September 2012 reshuffle, Paterson was made environment, food and rural affairs secretary, a role he held for two years. He strongly supported badger culling to curb TB, spoke out against the foxhunting ban and was widely regarded as a climate change sceptic.
In 2013 he claimed there were some advantages to the climate crisis, such as fewer people dying of cold in winter and the growth of certain crops farther north. During his time in office, money spent on preparing the UK for the impacts of global heating almost halved, from £29m in 2012-13 to £17m in 2013-14.
Considered a true-blue Tory, he believes in minimal taxation and bureaucracy. He is also a longstanding Eurosceptic and was a prominent Brexit campaigner, helping to found the Conservatives for Britain pressure group. In 2012 he rebelled against the prime minister to oppose gay marriage.
After leaving the cabinet in 2014 he set up a private thinktank, UK 2020, which he wound down in 2019 after receiving nearly £39,000 from unknown donors to fund overseas trips. He mainly travelled to the US where he gave a number of speeches to rightwing political groups.
After his wife, Rose, the chair of Aintree racecourse, killed herself in June last year, Paterson spoke of the anguish his family had experienced. “Never a minute goes by when I do not think ‘how on earth did I not notice?’,” he said. “We will never know definitively why Rose did this but the impact on us is absolutely terrible. I was married to her for 40 years, that is a long time and we never had an inkling of this.”
On Thursday he said the turmoil over his lobbying paled in comparison to the loss of Rose. “She was everything to my children and me. We miss her every day and the world will always be grey, sad and ultimately meaningless without her,” he said.
The Rose Paterson Trust raises funds to support suicide prevention projects.
• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.
