Lord Hayhoe - Telegraph On the eve of the 1970 election, Hayhoe was selected to fight Heston & Isleworth under bizarre circumstances. The sitting Tory, Richard Reader Harris, had been on trial for months on fraud charges connected with the collapse of John Bloom's Rolls Razor enterprise. The constituency association chose Hayhoe to take his place, but less than three weeks before Harris was cleared of all charges and drove straight to the adoption meeting. After stormy exchanges, Hayhoe defeated Harris by 242 votes to 176; he went on to increase the Conservative majority as Heath came to power. With Heath introducing his Industrial Relations Bill, Hayhoe, as secretary of the Conservative backbench Employment Committee, rallied support. He described the measure as "sensible, fair, moderate and relevant," even when its enactment prompted an upsurge in strikes. In 1973 when James Prior, Leader of the House, made Hayhoe his PPS, he was also appointed - as Britain joined the EC - vice-chairman of the Conservative Group for Europe. Hayhoe just managed to retain his seat in the two general elections of 1974 . Heath appointed him a spokesman on employment . When Mrs Thatcher ousted Heath, she kept Hayhoe at Employment, under Prior. Controversial Labour Bills on employment protection, dock work and the press kept him busy. Hayhoe's appointment in 1979 as Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Army was logical for a professional weapons engineer. He took a special interest in the quality of equipment for the troops both at the MoD and later on the Defence Select Committee. He attracted most attention, however, when he executed a parachute jump for the Airey Neave Memorial Trust. In 1981 he moved to the Civil Service Department as Minister of State . Hayhoe faced heated opposition to Mrs Thatcher's efforts to curb, then ban, trade union activity at GCHQ. He announced that lie detector tests for staff at Cheltenham would go ahead, then warned them they would be sacked unless they tore up their union cards. He offered a £1,000 "sweetener" to those who complied, but a few dozen stuck to their guns. Appointed a privy councillor in June 1985, Hayhoe went on holiday to France that September, leaving with the Treasury the telephone number of the apartment block where he was staying. When a call came from No 10, the concierge's response (according to Mrs Thatcher's emissary) was "rude and unhelpful." In heroically Gallic spirit, she declared herself only able to take one, emergency, message: "C'est tout." She refused to let Hayhoe return the call; he eventually heard of his appointment as Health Minister from a neighbour. His priority as Norman Fowler's deputy was rolling out the stark public information campaign on the dangers of Aids. In September 1986 Mrs Thatcher dropped Hayhoe and nine other sub-Cabinet ministers to give her government an edge. He joined the Defence Select Committee and was knighted. After a year's silence Hayhoe went on the attack - urging Nigel Lawson to forgo a tax cut in his next Budget and give the money to the NHS, and Mrs Thatcher to listen to the medical institutions" demand for action. When the poll tax was introduced, he declared himself "sorry and ashamed" that it should have been introduced by the Conservatives. In 1980 Hayhoe castigated as "batty, ill-prepared, politically inept and half-baked" proposals for means-testing the State pension that the Chancellor had reportedly floated with journalists. A furious Lawson told Hayhoe he should have first ascertained that the reports were accurate; Hayhoe replied that it had taken Lawson a surprisingly long time to deny them. Before Sir Anthony Meyer challenged Mrs Thatcher for the leadership that autumn, Hayhoe had to deny that he would be a "stalking-horse." But when Michael Heseltine forced her out a year later, Hayhoe was among his staunchest supporters, declaring: "It is increasingly difficult to envisage how the party could truly unite behind Margaret Thatcher, although I am absolutely convinced that unity will be achieved under a new leader." That leader would be John Major. Hayhoe left the Commons in 1992. He was created a life peer, and served on the Select Committee on the Public Service. From 1993 to 1995 he chaired the Guy's & St Thomas's NHS Trust. Barney Hayhoe married, in 1962, Anne Thornton, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. Lord Hayhoe, born August 8 1925, died September 7 2013