Lord Ashley of Stoke - Telegraph He woke to hear trams going past; he got to the window and realised the noise was in his head. For three months he suffered "a continuous noise like the shriek of a jet engine or roar of a power station," and for decades he suffered from tinnitus. To a 45-year-old man tipped for a ministerial career and in an occupation dependent on vocal communication, loss of hearing seemed the end. Ashley decided to quit, then resolved to overcome the challenge of remaining an MP in his new world of silence. "The only thing to do with a disability," he said, "is to admit it and overcome it." This he did, triumphantly. Ashley became a formidable parliamentarian and a tireless campaigner, focusing the attention of the nation and of government on the problems facing the disabled; it was largely due to Ashley that all governments now include a Minister for Disability. At Cambridge he had met Pauline Crispin, who proved equally indomitable and without whose determination and devotion Ashley could never have achieved what he did. She had married Ashley - a mature student who had left school at 14 and become a crane driver - at 19 after he persuaded the Mistress of Girton to waive the rule that undergraduates marrying had to leave the college. She gave him the confidence to continue as an MP and helped him lip-read and use the telephone, she (or their daughters) listening on an extension and mouthing to him what the caller was saying. A conversation with him was indistinguishable from a normal one. The Commons in 1977 financed a closed circuit device that enabled him to read what was being said from a miniature screen beside him, transcribed by an operator in the Press Gallery. He developed an extraordinary capacity to absorb and react to speeches and questions. Unable to hear his own voice, he got Conservative MPs opposite to indicate, by moving their hands up or down, whether he should speak louder or softer. In his early days of deafness he was particularly grateful to Edward Heath for speaking in his direction, and articulating carefully when answering a question from him. When Heath was ousted as Conservative leader, Ashley thanked him for his "very great personal kindness in times of very great trial." Though Ashley's voice tended to slur, he was always a highly articulate debater and performer on television - he had been a BBC producer - and radio. Determined not to be a "namby pamby," he gave no quarter, nor expected concessions. He could be pugnacious, even bloody-minded, when roused by injustice; he became a scourge of the pharmaceutical companies over their profits from the NHS and the side-effects of drugs like Halcion and Opren. The welfare of the deaf was his special concern. Ashley argued for free NHS hearing aids, and better education for the 700 children born each year irretrievably deaf. Another target was conditions in prisons and hospitals - in some of the latter he said there were "rats as big as cats" - and "Crown immunity" which prevented their prosecution under hygiene legislation. Ashley had a gnarled face that bore the marks of suffering, but always a warm smile and a keen sense of humour. He soon discovered that, while there is always instinctive understanding for the blind, the deaf tend to be regarded as a nuisance. He rated public attitudes to the handicapped as "deplorable. They are treated as second class citizens. What they need is warmth and human interest. What they don't need is patronising. When, in 1989, Ashley announced his impending retirement, the Labour leader Neil Kinnock said: "Jack was, is and always will be unique, his affliction proof of personal courage that is, without exaggeration, unique. No one in his generation has been a bolder or more tenacious campaigner for justice. Jack Ashley was born on December 6 1922 at Widnes, then in Lancashire, the son of Jack Ashley, a labourer who died when he was five, and the former Isabella Bridge. He insisted on leaving St Patrick's elementary school at 14 to support his mother and sisters as a labourer in a metal factory, and later as a crane driver at ICI. For a year - 1942-43 - he served with the RASC as a driver. At 22 he was elected to Widnes council and the national executive of the Chemical Workers" Union, the youngest member of both. After the war, despite claiming to have read only one book since leaving school, he won a trade union scholarship to Ruskin College, Oxford, then in 1948 to Gonville and Caius, Cambridge. Ashley thrived at Cambridge, chairing the Labour Club and becoming President of the Union in 1951 despite Conservative disdain at his refusal to wear evening dress. When Geoffrey Howe, president of the Conservative Association, accused him of "skulduggery," Ashley vowed: "I shall never speak to another Tory again as long as I live." It was one promise he would break. He toured America with the Union debating team, contested Finchley in 1951, worked as research officer for the General and Municipal Workers" Union, then joined the BBC as a talks producer. His career flourished, despite a propensity to act as the producers" shop steward, which saved several colleagues their jobs. He also gave eminent interviewees a lift to the studio on his two-stroke motorcycle. In 1956 he was given charge of the first regional news programmes for the South-East; he went on to be a senior producer with Panorama. On the morning after the 1964 election, he travelled down from Liverpool with Harold Wilson. Elected for Stoke South in 1966, Ashley warned striking seamen that unless they accepted the "reasonable offer" before them, they would alienate their friends. He aligned himself with Labour's pro-Marketeers, and urged warring factions on defence not to "tear the party apart" when no issue of principle was at stake. He supported Wilson's prices and incomes policy, but made his support conditional on action to tackle unemployment. Ashley launched his first campaign in 1967, for the release of Leslie Parkes, a constituent arrested for desertion from the Army after magistrates decided he had not deserted. Parkes said he had signed up for three years, the Army nine; he was tricked into visiting the police station, where he was handed over to the military. Fulminating at "this clumsy, high-handed and totally unnecessary action," Ashley warned: "The Army will get no rest until justice is done and seen to be done." There were cheers in the House when Denis Healey, Defence Secretary, announced Parkes" release. That June Michael Stewart, Secretary for Economic Affairs, appointed Ashley his Parliamentary private secretary. When he was chosen to second the response to the Queen's Speech, speculation grew that Wilson had a job for him. Then he lost his hearing. Ashley resigned as Stewart's PPS, then announced he would give up his seat. But after three weeks of urging from MPs from all parties he changed his mind, saying: "On reflection, there's nothing I can't do as an MP. All that's impaired is my hearing. On his first day back, he introduced a Bill to set up a Disablement Advisory Commission. Helped by Bessie Braddock, he got through the ritual perfectly. When the Speaker asked: "What day?," he replied straight away, having learned to lipread. He went on to chair - as he would throughout his career - a new all-party group on disablement, lip-reading through the launch. And when Alf Morris introduced his landmark Chronic Sick and Disabled Persons Bill, Ashley worked hard to get it through. When Barbara Castle unveiled her In Place of Strife trade union reform package to a party meeting, Ashley was the only MP to support it. Ashley's greatest campaign began in October 1972, when he challenged the Speaker's refusal to allow a motion reflecting press criticism of Distillers" compensation offer for 370 thalidomide children, because the matter was sub judice. Within weeks, Wilson had taken up the issue with a motion urging Distillers to "face up to their moral responsibilities." At first Edward Heath, the Prime Minister of the day, said nothing could be done with litigation pending. Ashley secured a full-dress debate, claiming Distillers had had no compunction in fighting these disabled children for 10 years, "a shocking example of man's inhumanity to man." Sir Keith Joseph, Social Services Secretary, freed up £3 million for the victims in advance of a settlement. That December, Distillers offered a £11,850,000 trust fund (their own contribution to be £5 million), conditional on the Government exempting it from tax. Ashley called it "a gigantic confidence trick." With shareholders protesting and some shops boycotting their products, Distillers increased their offer to £2 million per annum over 10 years; by May it was £26 million. Ashley next took up the cause of battered wives, compiling a dossier of letters detailing their husbands" brutality, and the failure of police, solicitors and social workers to respond. Robert Carr, Home Secretary, urged chief constables to improve matters. With Labour back in power, Ashley became PPS to Mrs Castle at the DHSS, with a say in policies on disability. Throughout 1974 he fought a Budget change that meant income from the thalidomide fund would be taxed at 48p in the pound. The Treasury dug its heels in, but eventually, after fierce criticism from Ashley, provided £5 million to offset the impact. A ruling by the Law Lords that a man was innocent of rape if he said he believed the woman had consented outraged Ashley, Condemning the judges for a "rapists" charter," he promoted a Bill to allow a defendant the defence that he believed the woman had consented only if that belief was reasonable. The Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, set up a review under Dame Rose Heilbron; it recommended an end to prying into a woman's sexual history, and having more women on rape juries. Ashley brought in Bills enacting Heilbron's findings - despite his colleague John Lee trying to talk one out - and to make rape in marriage an offence. In 1975 Ashley tabled a motion for the removal of Judge Christmas Humphreys, 74, who had given a suspended sentence to a youth convicted of raping two women at knife-point. He urged the Lord Chancellor to intervene, but was told that setting guidelines would infringe judges" independence, a situation Ashley scorned as "legal bingo." Humphreys retired, unrepentant, six months later. The solicitors" monopoly on conveyancing was Ashley's next target; within weeks, Wilson set up a Royal Commission. After James Callaghan succeeded Wilson in 1976, Ashley was elected to the liaison committee between the Cabinet and the Parliamentary Party. When Michael Foot became deputy leader, Ashley was co-opted in his place to the overwhelmingly Left-wing NEC, having twice narrowly missed election. He first raised the issue of vaccine-damaged children in 1977, seeking an inquiry into 300 children allegedly brain-damaged by vaccinations for whooping cough. When Mrs Castle's successor David Ennals resisted, Ashley accused him of a "shabby and squalid speech"; 10 years later he would seek a judicial inquiry. In 1980 he took up the case of women who had taken Debendox to counter morning sickness in pregnancy and whose babies had been born deformed. He persuaded ministers to warn doctors against prescribing it, helped Debendox parents to organise, and applied pressure when the manufacturers agreed to pay American victims £92 million, but 70 British parents nothing. He also sought to shame the Eli Lilly company into behaving "more humanely" toward 1,500 people who claimed to have been harmed by its arthritis drug Opren, and pressed for compensation for women damaged after using the Dalkon contraceptive shield. In 1981 he began a three-year campaign for the re-examination of every case involving the Home Office forensic scientist Dr Alan Clift, after a constituent was freed having served nearly nine years for murdering a woman he had never met. Eventually Willie Whitelaw, the Home Secretary, agreed; 1,500 cases were reviewed after Clift's forced retirement, and of the first 10 convictions taken back to the Court of Appeal, three were overturned. Ashley again protested over rape sentences in 1982, after a judge fined a rapist £2,000 because the girl was hitch-hiking at night. The Lord Chief Justice issued advice that rapists should be jailed except in "wholly exceptional circumstances." Having protested at disabled Falklands veterans being excluded from the victory parade, Ashley became concerned at the fate of servicemen injured in training exercises, who had no redress from the MoD. He also sought an inquiry into "widespread and severe" bullying in Forces" training establishments. His move to the Lords in 1992 meant a process of adjustment for Ashley and peers alike. He was cheered when in October 1993 he entered the Chamber having partially regained his hearing. The next year, he promoted a Bill to outlaw discrimination against the disabled, only for John Major's government to reject it on cost grounds. After Labour's landslide victory in 1997, he welcomed steps by Tony Blair's government to assist the disabled, but kept ministers up to the mark if he felt they were backsliding. Ashley was founder-president of the Hearing and Speech Trust and Deafness Research UK, and president of the Royal National Institute for the Deaf and the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. He was Chancellor of Staffordshire University from 1993 to 2002, and held 13 honorary degrees. He published an account of his experiences, Journey Into Silence, in 1973, having been persuaded to write it by the former BBC director-general Sir Hugh Greene. Act of Defiance followed in 1992. Jack Ashley married Pauline Crispin in 1951; she died in 2003. He leaves three daughters: the eldest is Jackie Ashley, the political journalist and wife of the BBC's former political editor Andrew Marr. Lord Ashley of Stoke, born December 6 1922, died April 20 2012