Mark Carlisle, Baron Carlisle of Bucklow, QC, DL, PC (7 July 1929 – 14 July 2005) was a British Conservative Party politician and was Member of Parliament (MP) for Runcorn from 1964 to 1983 and then for Warrington South until 1987. Created a life peer in November 1987, he served as Secretary of State for Education and Science from 1979 until 1981.
Mark Carlisle's father was a Manchester cotton merchant, and his parents were in Montevideo, Uruguay, when he was born. He was educated at Radley College in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, and the University of Manchester. He was Chairman of the university's Conservative association, and Federation of university Conservatives in 1953. In 1957 he was vice-chairman of North-West Young Conservatives. He was admitted Gray's Inn, was called to the bar, and made QC in 1971.
Political career
Carlisle was an unsuccessful Conservative candidate at the 1958 St Helens by-election, and lost again in the subsequent 1959 general election.
He was eventually selected for the Cheshire constituency of Runcorn, a rural and suburban seat which he won at the 1964 general election. He was a liberal Tory from the start, voting for the abolition of capital punishment in 1964. Tall, affable and easy-going, he was a more relaxed figure in Edward Heath's party than later under the first female Prime Minister. He disliked her abrasive manner, and according to The Daily Telegraph "was unhappy as Education secretary". He represented legal and penal policy on the party's 1922 committee. Carlisle was on the board of NACRO for many years and an experienced voice on the Home Office Advisory Council 1966–70. His reasoning on the question of capital punishment was revealed in a Commons speech made twenty years later on 1 April 1987: There are strong moral objections to the death penalty and to the state taking life. I do not suggest that those objections are by any means absolute. I accept and realise that the state has a responsibility to secure the safety of society. However, I believe that the moral objections to the state taking life mean that the burden of proof for the restoration of capital punishment must rest on those who claim that it is right and necessary to take life. I believe that they can do that only if they can show that the death penalty is a unique deterrent.
He was Under-Secretary of State for Home Affairs from 1970 to 1972 when he became a Minister of State for Home Affairs. Carlisle steered the government Criminal Justice bill through, and warned the prison establishments to improve institutional discipline. The Conservatives were out of office after February 1974 general election, but the new Labour government retained his services on the Franks Immigration committee, as he was practising as a QC. During the 1970s he lived in Dolphin Square.
Carlisle was a Heathite moderate on issues of public expenditure and European integration.
He was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Science in 1978 before being appointed to the department itself when Margaret Thatcher won the general election in May 1979. Former Labour Cabinet Minister Clare Short has said that it was her low opinion of Carlisle, whom she worked under as a civil servant, which persuaded her to enter elected politics herself because she believed she "could do better" than many of the MPs she dealt with. A liberal traditionalist, Carlisle created the Assisted Places Scheme, which enabled very bright working-class children gain a free place at some of Britain's top public schools. Moreover, as Education Secretary he removed subsidised meals at school dinners on advice that they were not being taken up. What proved the undoing of this cabinet "wet" was a promise of Maintenance Grant funding to local education. Carlisle fell foul of the Prime Minister's economic strategy. In his first budget Geoffrey Howe retained education funding for two years, but by 1981 deeper cuts had been passed. He resisted a total of £1 bn in cuts, but when pushed by the Prime Minister to accept cuts to free school transport, he was forced to back down.