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Baroness Maddock, leading Liberal Democrat who won a seismic by-election victory – obituary

Baroness Maddock, President, Liberal Democratic Party - Universal Pictorial Press Photo
Baroness Maddock, President, Liberal Democratic Party - Universal Pictorial Press Photo

Baroness Maddock, Lady Beith, who has died aged 75, was an influential Liberal Democrat; she was leader of the party’s councillors in Southampton, the victor of a sensational by-election at Christchurch, party president as Paddy Ashdown handed over to Charles Kennedy, and an active member of the Lords, most recently as deputy chief whip.

Created a life peeress after losing her seat in 1997, Diana Maddock and her second husband, the former Lib Dem deputy leader Alan Beith, had been one of the very few married couples each entitled since 2015 to sit in the upper house.

Kind, patient and smart with a touch of the older Jamie Lee Curtis about her, Diana Maddock, according to the Lib Dems’ acting leader Ed Davey, “helped shape the heart of the party. She has been a great friend, support and inspiration to me over many years, and I will miss her terribly.”

Baroness Maddock, second from right, with Charles Kennedy, front left, Alan Beith, centre, and key parliamentary colleagues during the 2001 general election - Brian Smith
Baroness Maddock, second from right, with Charles Kennedy, front left, Alan Beith, centre, and key parliamentary colleagues during the 2001 general election - Brian Smith

The high point of her four decades of service first to the Liberal Party, and then to the Lib Dems, was her seismic by-election victory at Christchurch in July 1993, caused by the death of Robert Adley, who had been leading a Tory rebellion against rail privatisation.

With the unpopularity of John Major’s government at its height, Diana Maddock converted a Conservative majority of 23,015 the year before into a Lib Dem one of 16,427 – a 35.4 per cent swing. The Labour vote was squeezed to just 2.7 per cent in a field of 14 candidates – including one on a “Sack [the England football manager] Graham Taylor” platform.

She achieved this remarkable win despite the Conservatives fielding a strong candidate in the former Bristol MP Rob Hayward, and their avoiding own goals like Norman Lamont’s “Je ne regrette rien” which, weeks before, had lost the Newbury by-election to the Lib Dems and cost Lamont his job as Chancellor.

The political scientist Ivor Crewe wrote: “Christchurch goes off the Richter scale of by-election earthquakes. Commentators’ references to the ‘biggest swing against the Conservatives since the war’ fall short of its true measure.

“It was the largest swing against any government since Britain’s modern party system was established in 1918. Setting aside freak results caused by party splits, no modern government has seen its support fall by as much – 32 per cent – as the Conservative vote fell in Christchurch.”

Diana Maddock would represent Christchurch for almost four years before losing to the Conservative Christopher Chope by 2,165 votes in the 1997 election that brought New Labour to power.

Ashdown decided the party needed her talent at Westminster, and that October she was given a life peerage. For seven years she was party spokesman on housing. Her legacy as an MP was the Home Energy Conservation Act of 1995, which placed a duty on councils to submit plans to government for improving home energy efficiency by 30 per cent.

She was born Diana Margaret Derbyshire on May 19 1945, the daughter of Reginald Derbyshire and the former Margaret Evans. From Brockenhurst Grammar School, she qualified to teach at Shenstone Training College and Portsmouth Polytechnic.

After teaching English as a foreign language in Southampton she spent three years from 1969 with the extra-mural department of Stockholm University. She later taught in Southampton and Bournemouth.

Diana Maddock joined the Liberals in 1976, and in 1984 was elected to Southampton city council, becoming group leader as the Liberals merged with the SDP. At the 1992 general election she fought Southampton Test, finishing third.

At Westminster, she and Beith – whose first wife died of cancer in 1998 – became allies in trying to prevent Ashdown getting too close to Tony Blair, who had, unprecedentedly, set up a Joint Cabinet Committee with the Lib Dems. Ashdown was keen to get the most out of the arrangement – including proportional representation, on which Lord (Roy) Jenkins was to report.

In November 1998, Beith and Lady Maddock (as party president-elect) called on Ashdown and urged him not to extend the remit of the joint committee. Days later, Blair and Ashdown signed an agreement to move it forward, with Beith and Jack Cunningham to review its effectiveness.

Diana Maddock with her first husband Bob and family - Solent News and Photo Agency
Diana Maddock with her first husband Bob and family - Solent News and Photo Agency

When Ashdown showed the agreement to Lady Maddock she put her head in her hands, exclaiming: “Oh, dear God. this is terrible. What a disaster.” She warned Ashdown that the party’s federal executive would need careful handling and, according to his Diaries, “went out calmer than when she came in”.

Shortly after she succeeded Robert Maclennan as president at the start of 1999, Ashdown asked her to come and see him. When he told her he was standing down as leader and would not be standing again at Yeovil, she told him: “Goodness, that’s a relief. I thought you might be about to announce we were going into a coalition.”

That August, it fell to Lady Maddock to announce the result of the leadership contest. Much of the drama was drained away by the need to explain the exhaustive electoral process involving five candidates, before she was able to declare Kennedy the winner. She served until the end of 2000.

In 2001 her first marriage was dissolved, and she and Beith were married. They made their main home in his Berwick-on-Tweed constituency, where from 2005 to 2008 she was a county councillor. Beith left the Commons in 2015, receiving his life peerage.

When the MPs’ expenses scandal broke in 2009, the Daily Telegraph reported that Beith had claimed £117,000 in second-home allowances while Lady Maddock had claimed £60,000 Lords’ expenses for staying at the same London address. He responded: “It would be quite wrong for the taxpayer to pay twice for the same costs, so we have shared the costs.”

Lady Maddock chaired Lord Speaker’s Advisory Panel on Works of Art, had been a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, and was co-chairman of the all-party Anglo-Swedish Group and vice-chairman of the all-party Universities Group.

She was at various times president of the Anglo-Swedish Society, the National Home Improvement Council and the Sustainable Energy Association; and vice-president of the National Housing Federation, National Energy Action, and the Local Government Association.

Diana Derbyshire married first, in 1966, Robert Maddock, with whom she had two daughters. Lord Beith and his adopted daughter from his first marriage also survive her.

Baroness Maddock, born May 19 1945, died June 26 2020