Norman Fowler, Baron Fowler

Fowler was born on 2 February 1938 to Norman Frederick Fowler and Katherine (née Baker). He is an only child. He was educated at King Edward VI Grammar School in Chelmsford, Essex. After school, he did National Service as a second lieutenant in the Essex Regiment. He then studied at Trinity Hall, Cambridge (BA Economics & Law 1961). He was Chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association in Michaelmas 1960, in which term he entertained both the Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and Home Secretary Rab Butler. Following university, he became a journalist, and worked at The Times. ==Member of Parliament==

Fowler, who had aspired to become an MP since childhood, was elected for Nottingham South in 1970; after the seat was abolished, he switched to Sutton Coldfield at the February 1974 election. In government Upon Margaret Thatcher becoming prime minister in 1979, she did not immediately appoint Fowler to her Cabinet, explaining: "we were short of one place. As a result, Norman Fowler, as Minister of State at Transport, was not able to be an official member of the Cabinet, although he attended all our meetings." As secretary of state for transport, Fowler drove through Lord Nugent's 1981 bill to make seat belts compulsory, a law that came into force in 1983. As secretary of state for social services in 1986, Fowler implemented the first official drive to educate the British public as to the dangers of AIDS and how transmission could be reduced. Some Conservatives, including Thatcher herself, objected to the frank content of these messages, which contained material about needle usage and intravenous drugs, as well as discussions about the risks of unprotected sex. Backbenches, retirement and Shadow Cabinet Fowler resigned from the Cabinet in January 1990. He later claimed that he was the first politician to cite a desire to spend more time with family as the reason for leaving office. The phrase has been reused by many others as a reason for a resignation, and is often treated as insincere or euphemistic, though Fowler has said he was being literal, as he worried he was growing distant from his young children. Following his resignation from the Government frontbench, Fowler was knighted in 1990. Fowler then returned twice to front-line politics. First as Chairman of the Conservative Party (though he remained a backbencher in the Commons) from 1992 to 1994, during which time he oversaw the parliamentary boundary changes of the early 1990s. Following the Conservatives' loss to Tony Blair's New Labour, he sat on the Opposition front benches as Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Transport and the Regions (1997–98) and then as Shadow Home Secretary (1998–99). In 2001, Fowler stepped down as a Member of Parliament. ==House of Lords==

in 2021. His deputy and successor, Lord McFall of Alcluith, sits on the steps of the throne behind him. After standing down from the House of Commons, he entered the House of Lords, sitting on the Conservative benches as Baron Fowler, of Sutton Coldfield, in the County of West Midlands. He had first been offered a peerage in 1989. In 2003, Lord Fowler proposed that the European Union should appoint a high-level coordinator with ambassadorial rank to deal with the AIDS epidemic. In 2006, Fowler chaired a House of Lords select committee which criticised the use of the television licence fee, which is used to fund the BBC. His book A Political Suicide (Politico's Publishing ) was published in 2008, and was shortlisted for the Channel 4 Political Book of the Year Award. In May 2013, Fowler gave his support to legislation aiming to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples, stating: "Parliament should value people equally in the law, and that enabling same-sex couples to marry removes the current inequity." He was elected as Lord Speaker in 2016. He is the third person and first man to hold the office since it was established by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. Fowler has stated that he favours reducing the House of Lords to 600 members. On 19 March 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the 82 year old announced that he would be taking public health advice and withdrawing from Westminster — he would instead be remote working, with deputy speakers taking over his in-person role in the House of Lords chamber. He returned in July 2020 to resume his duties in-person. On 25 February 2021, some months before his term was to end in September, Fowler announced that he would be stepping down as Lord Speaker in April 2021, ahead of the introduction of a series of structural and organisational changes in the Lords, saying that it would be best for those changes to be "seen through by the team who will be implementing them". He also stated his desire to stand down in order to "speak his mind" as an independent (crossbench) member of the House of Lords on issues he has campaigned for, in particular LGBT rights in the United Kingdom, and HIV and AIDS. In March 2021, Fowler backed calls for the UK's first ever national AIDS memorial, supporting its aim of fighting stigma and discrimination against those with HIV and AIDS. ==Private sector==

Lord Fowler has served on the boards of directors of several companies and is non-executive chairman of Aggregate Industries plc. He is a member of the National Union of Journalists. ==Personal life==

After a previous marriage ended in divorce, Fowler married Fiona Poole, an economist at the House of Commons Research Service, in 1979. They had two daughters, and Fowler became a stepfather to his wife's son from her prior marriage. , Fowler lives in Fulham, London. ==Bibliography==