He was a member of
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's
Policy Unit from 1983 to 1986. According to official government documents from 1985, released in December 2014 under the
thirty-year rule, Letwin recommended that the Prime Minister "use Scotland as a trail-blazer for the pure residence charge", i.e. the controversial
Community Charge or "Poll tax", having trialled it there first, and to implement it nationwide should "the exemplifications prove ... it is feasible." Another 1985 internal memo released in December 2015 showed Letwin's response to the
Broadwater Farm riot, which blamed the violence on the "bad moral attitudes" of the predominantly Afro-Caribbean rioters, claiming that "lower-class, unemployed white people lived for years without a breakdown of public order on anything like the present scale". It also criticised some of the schemes proposed to address inner-city problems, suggesting
David Young's proposed scheme to support black entrepreneurs would flounder because the money would be spent on the "disco and drug trade". Letwin later apologised, saying that parts of the memo had been "both badly worded and wrong." Letwin co-authored ''Britain's biggest enterprise: ideas for radical reform of the NHS'', a 1988
Centre for Policy Studies pamphlet written with
John Redwood which advocated a closer relationship between the
National Health Service and the private sector. This is regarded as providing a theoretical justification for NHS reforms carried out by subsequent governments, particularly the
Health and Social Care Act 2012. Letwin stood unsuccessfully against
Diane Abbott in
Hackney North and Stoke Newington at the
1987 election, and against
Glenda Jackson for the
Hampstead and Highgate seat at the
1992 election.
MP for West Dorset (1997–2019) Letwin won the historically
safe Conservative seat of
West Dorset at the
1997 general election, achieving a majority of 1,840 votes over the next candidate.
Shadow Cabinet (2000–2010) As
Leader of the Opposition and
Leader of the Conservative Party William Hague appointed Letwin as a member of his
Shadow Cabinet as
Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury in September 2000. He supported
Michael Portillo and
Michael Howard in their consecutive tenures as
Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. He had previously been an official Opposition spokesman on Constitutional Affairs, Scotland and Wales from 1998, and was promoted to
Shadow Financial Secretary to the Treasury in 1999. During the campaign for the
2001 general election, Letwin expressed an aspiration to curtail future
public spending by £20 billion per annum relative to the plans of the
Labour government. When this proposal came under attack as regressive, Letwin found few of his colleagues to defend it, and he adopted a low profile for the remainder of the campaign. He went into hiding during the 2001 election. At this election, his majority in his
West Dorset constituency was cut to 1,414 votes. In September 2001, he was appointed
Shadow Home Secretary by the new Conservative Party leader
Iain Duncan Smith. In this role, he attracted plaudits for his advocacy of a "neighbourly society", which manifested itself in calls for street by street neighbourhood policing, modelled on the philosophy of the police in New York. He was also largely credited with forcing the then
Home Secretary to withdraw his proposal in 2001 to introduce an offence of incitement to religious hatred. He successfully argued that such an offence would be impossible to define, so there would be little chance of prosecution. He also argued that Muslims would feel persecuted by such a law. In late 2003,
Michael Howard appointed Letwin as his successor as
Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. As Shadow Chancellor he focused on reducing waste in the public sector. At the
2005 general election the Conservative Party claimed to have found £35 billion worth of potential savings, to be used for increased resources for front-line services and for tax cuts. This approach was credited with forcing the government to introduce bureaucracy reduction and cost-cutting proposals of their own. In May 2005, Letwin's majority in his seat increased to 2,461 votes, despite his hard pro-EU views. After the election, Letwin was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
The Times reported that he had requested a role less onerous than his former Treasury brief so that he would have time to pursue his career in the City. Until December 2009, he was a non-executive director of the merchant bank
NM Rothschild Corporate Finance Ltd. Following
Michael Howard's decision to stand down as Conservative Party leader after the
2005 election, Letwin publicly backed the youngest candidate and eventual winner
David Cameron. In the lead-up to the
2010 general election, Letwin played an important role in the development of
Conservative policy, and was described by
Daniel Finkelstein as "the
Gandalf of the process". The 2010 general election saw him increase his majority to 3,923 votes.
Cameron premiership (2010–2016) British
Prime Minister David Cameron appointed Letwin to the newly created office of
Minister of State for Government Policy in the newly formed
Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government in May 2010. His responsibilities included developing government policies with the Cabinet Office, as set out in the
Coalition's programme for government, as well as implementing departmental business plans. He also attended the Cabinet, although not as a full member or Cabinet Minister. Letwin was appointed as
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster on 14 July 2014, succeeding
Lord Hill of Oareford who became the
United Kingdom's next
European commissioner. He also continued in his role as Minister for Policy until the 2015 general election, when the position was abolished. He was returned with a much increased majority of 16,130 votes by his West Dorset constituents at the
2015 general election. Following that election, Letwin remained Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Cameron also appointed him as a full member of the new Conservative government's
Cabinet with responsibility for overall charge and oversight of the
Cabinet Office. Immediately following the 23 June
2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, Cameron appointed Letwin "Minister for Brexit". He appeared on 5 July before the
Foreign Affairs Select Committee and was criticised for Government's lack of planning for a leave vote. The Cabinet was accused of "dereliction of duty". When committee chairman
Crispin Blunt observed, upon the resignation of Cameron, that Letwin had been left "holding the baby", Letwin said, "I can only say that the baby is being firmly held, and that my intention is that the baby should prosper – because I care about the baby in question. It is, in fact, our country." Letwin was awarded a
knighthood by
David Cameron in the
2016 Prime Minister's Resignation Honours List. This gave him the
honorific title "
Sir" for life.
May premiership (2016–2019) The new Prime Minister
Theresa May terminated Letwin's tenure as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and split the Minister for Brexit position he had held, creating the
Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union and handing that job to arch-Leaver
David Davis. In 2018, Letwin led an "independent review" into the delivery of housing on large development sites. During the
Second May ministry in 2019, Letwin rebelled against leading
Eurosceptics within the
Conservative Party by tabling a cross-party motion to hold "
indicative votes", allowing MPs to vote on several Brexit options in order to establish whether any could command a majority in the House of Commons. Though no option received a positive number of votes, the "
People's Vote" proposal from
Margaret Beckett was the most popular. On 3 September 2019 he proposed the
Letwin motion upon the Benn bill under Standing Order No. 24, and then, with 20 other rebel Conservative MPs, voted against the Conservative government of
Boris Johnson. The rebel MPs voted for the Letwin motion to take control of parliamentary business from the government, for the purpose of introducing a bill which would prevent the Prime Minister's policy of allowing the United Kingdom to leave the EU without a deal on 31 October. The bill thus introduced the next day became the
European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act 2019. Subsequently, all 21 were advised that they had lost the Conservative
whip, expelling them as Conservative MPs and requiring them to sit as independents. If Letwin had decided to stand for re-election in a future election the party would have blocked him as a Conservative candidate, His amendment passed by 322 to 306 votes. The government then deferred the vote it had planned for that day on the actual deal itself. His amendment attracted the support of ten former Conservative and ten
Democratic Unionist Party members, while the government attracted the votes of six
Labour MPs and seventeen independents. Eight Labour MPs, five Conservatives and one independent member did not vote on the Letwin motion. The following day,
The Sunday Telegraph published a declaration from an anonymous Conservative source that Letwin's motion had been masterminded by
Lord Pannick, the barrister who had represented
Gina Miller in her actions against the
Johnson ministry's Brexit policy. After announcing that he would not stand in the
2019 general election, Letwin was succeeded as the Conservative candidate for Dorset West by
Chris Loder, who was subsequently elected as the seat's MP. ==Public sector spending==