My former colleague Peter Jacques, who has died aged 81, worked at the TUC for 25 years, most of that time as head of the social insurance and industrial welfare department. He helped bring forth benefits that can still be felt in the world of work and wider social policy.
The years of the Wilson-Callaghan Labour government (1974-79) were ones when his impact was greatest. Peter’s department was closely involved in the creation of earnings-related pensions and the growth of workplace pensions.
He worked with ministers such as Barbara Castle on social security issues and later on the replacement of family allowances with child benefits paid directly to mothers.
This was the era that also saw the rise of the pensioners’ lobby – a force that to this day governments have been reluctant to challenge. Peter helped bring together various pensioners’ groups through the TUC.
But it was in the area of health and safety that he had the most significant and long-lasting impact. Peter was a member of the Robens committee whose 1972 report led to the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act and the establishment of the Health and Safety Commission, of which he was a founder member.
Millions of people owe their lives and health to the systems that Peter worked to create and sustain, expanding the policy agenda beyond accidents to safeguard all aspects of health in the workplace and involving workers through unions in setting safety standards.
Peter was born into a working-class south London family, the fourth of six sons of Ivy (nee Farr) and George Jacques. His father was a foreman on building projects in Borough. On leaving school Peter had a number of labouring jobs, before he eventually went on to higher education.
He studied sociology at Rutherford College in Newcastle and it was there that he met his future wife, Jackie Sears, and became close friends with Rodney Bickerstaffe, a fellow student and future union leader. Peter and Jackie married in 1965, and both of them took teaching qualifications at Leicester University. But after a term in the classroom, Peter felt that teaching was not for him, and he applied for the job as an assistant (now known as a policy officer) in the social insurance and industrial welfare department, remaining with the TUC until he took early retirement in 1990.
Peter was a trade unionist to his fingertips. When you had earned his trust and respect his loyalty was complete. He was clearly driven by deep inner convictions that came to him through his upbringing and life experience and despite, or perhaps because of this, he was greatly respected by senior figures in government and in employers’ organisations.
Peter served on a number of public bodies and was made a CBE in 1990 for his contribution to work and pensions.
Following his retirement he became a member of the Redbridge and Waltham Forest health authority and the Employment Appeal Tribunal.
In later life he suffered from the lung disease COPD that had also affected his mother and brothers. He is survived by Jackie, their two children, Jon and Tamsin, and four grandchildren.
