Tom McCabe, the former Labour MSP minister, who has died from cancer at the age of 61, was one of the most competent and effective politicians to emerge through the Scottish parliament since it was established in 1999, and served as a minister at Holyrood in three key roles. In the first of those, Donald Dewar, the Scottish first minister, gave him the title of minister for the parliament and with it the formidable organisational task of making the new institution work. Dewar correctly judged that McCabe’s pragmatic negotiating skills would make him well-suited to the role.
The product of a trade union and local government background in Lanarkshire, McCabe found himself taking on the role of a go-between with the Scottish Liberal Democrats, a disparate bunch, who became Labour’s partners in coalition. It was not a particularly easy relationship but he made it work for the first three years of Holyrood. In 2001, when Jack McConnell became first minister, McCabe lost his cabinet position and declined the offer of a lesser ministerial role. However, his absence was shortlived and he returned as deputy minister for health in 2003 with a particular agenda to pursue – the reform of Scotland’s disastrous relationship with tobacco.
Thus, McCabe’s name and reputation became closely associated with the most radical measure so far introduced by the Scottish parliament – the smoking ban in enclosed public places that led the way for the rest of the UK and has transformed the atmosphere of Scotland’s pubs and other public meeting places.
In 2004, launching a public consultation, McCabe stated that Scotland had “the highest rates of lung cancer in Europe for both men and women, with most cases caused by smoking”. The prospect of a ban was bitterly opposed by the tobacco industry, which correctly foresaw that it would be taken up by the rest of the UK. McCabe expertly managed the consultation process and paved the way for more comprehensive legislation than anticipated.
Amid threats of legal action from the tobacco and hospitality industries, and a fair degree of public scepticism, it took considerable political courage for ministers to press ahead with what the British Medical Association described as “the single most effective piece of public health legislation to be passed in the UK”.
By the time the Smoking, Health and Social Care (Scotland) Act was passed in 2005, McCabe had been promoted by McConnell to the position of minister for finance and public service reform. Although he suffered from an uneasy relationship with the Scottish media, once again he proved an able and effective minister.
McCabe, who never went out of his way to seek a high public profile, held his Hamilton South seat in 2007 when the SNP became the largest party at Holyrood for the first time and then did a deal with the Conservatives that allowed them to take office. Thereafter, he played a less prominent role in the Scottish parliament while his private life underwent radical change. His first marriage had broken up and in 2006 he had married Shuming Kong, a London-based reporter with China Central Television.
In 2011 McCabe lost his seat at Holyrood in the face of boundary changes and a Scotland-wide nationalist surge, and thereafter made his living as a policy officer with Glasgow city council. He continued to live in Hamilton, where he had been born and raised, the son of Tommy and Sadie. There he had attended St Martin’s secondary school before going to work in the vast Hoover plant at nearby Cambuslang. He had quickly become immersed in trade union activities at the factory and at the age of 19 was a member of the Scottish TUC’s youth advisory committee.
In those days his union, the AUEW, contained a substantial Communist party influence, particularly in Scotland. McCabe’s position was always firmly in the mainstream and he resisted factional politics both within the trade union movement and as a member of the Labour party’s Scottish executive committee.
Hoover employed more than 5,000 people at its peak and McCabe fought a series of notable campaigns to retain jobs as production at Cambuslang gradually went overseas. He was senior shop steward at the plant from 1974 to 1993. Having taken a public administration degree at the Bell College of Technology in Hamilton, he switched to work as a welfare rights officer at Strathclyde regional council and then North Lanarkshire council from 1993 to 1998.
At the same time he was pursuing a career in local politics. Elected to Hamilton district council in 1988, he became leader of the authority in 1992 and, following local government reorganisation, was a modernising and successful leader of South Lanarkshire council before becoming an MSP. In all his roles, he was noted for the consideration he showed to those who worked for him.
He is survived by Shuming and their daughter, Ava, and by a son, Mark, and daughter, Paula, from his first marriage.
• Tom McCabe, politician, born 8 April 1954; died 19 April 2015
