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Cecil Edward Parkinson, Baron Parkinson, (1 September 1931 – 22 January 2016) was a British Conservative Party politician and cabinet minister. A chartered accountant by training, he entered Parliament in November 1970, and was appointed a minister in Margaret Thatcher's first government in May 1979. He successfully managed the Conservative Party's 1983 election campaign, and was rewarded with an appointment as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, but was forced to resign following revelations that his former secretary, Sara Keays, was pregnant with his child, whom she later bore and named Flora Keays. Flora was born with severe cerebral palsy.
Parkinson subsequently served as Secretary of State for Energy, and later Secretary of State for Transport. He resigned that office in 1990, on the same day that Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister. He was created Baron Parkinson in 1992, and served in the House of Lords until his retirement in September 2015.
After leaving university, Parkinson worked as a manager for the Novar plc, later becoming a consultant. He trained and qualified as a chartered accountant, and founded Parkinson-Hart Securities in 1961.
Parkinson was forced to resign on 14 October 1983, after the news of Sara Keays's pregnancy had become public knowledge. The child was born on New Year's Eve, and christened Flora Keays. Subsequently, as a result of a dispute over child maintenance payments, Parkinson (with Keays's initial consent) was able to gain an injunction in 1993, forbidding the British media from making any reference to their daughter. Following the birth, Parkinson released a statement in which he wished the baby "peace, privacy and a happy life".BBC News Summary, 4 January 1984. Flora Keays has learning difficulties and Asperger syndrome, and also underwent an operation to remove a brain tumour when she was four, although it is unknown whether this either caused or complicated her condition.
This court order was the subject of some controversy until Flora Keays reached the age of 18 at the end of 2001, when the court order expired. It was stated in the press that Parkinson had never met his child and presumably had no intention of doing so. While he had assisted with Flora's education and her financial upkeep, it was publicly pointed out that he had not even sent her a birthday card and that her mother assumed that Flora could not ever expect to receive one.
At the time of the revelation of Parkinson's relationship with Sara Keays, he made much of what he described as the volume of letters in support that he received. Many in the Conservative Party attacked Keays. Edwina Currie said on 7 October 1985, whilst herself having an affair with John Major, "I feel very very sorry for Cecil and his family. Most of my thoughts on Sara Keays are unprintable. Perhaps the most polite thing to say is she's a right cow".Daily Mirror 08 Oct 1985·Page 2 By 2001, however, the media focused more upon Flora and her difficulties than on protecting Parkinson's reputation, so more voices were raised in criticism of Parkinson.
Following four years on the back benches, he was appointed Secretary of State for Energy in 1987 (having been tipped as a potential Chancellor of the Exchequer), and for Transport in the July 1989 reshuffle. One of the highlights during his tenure of the latter job was announcing new main-line rail tunnels across London, called Crossrail. He resigned along with Margaret Thatcher when she was replaced by John Major and stood down from the House of Commons at the 1992 general election.
Following the 1992 election, he was created Baron Parkinson, of Carnforth, in the County of Lancashire, on 29 June 1992.
That year, Parkinson also published his memoirs, in which he claimed that, with a determined campaign, Thatcher would have won the second ballot of the Conservative leadership election, when her Cabinet had warned her she would lose and thus persuaded her to stand down.
As a result of an extra-marital affair with Sara Keays, his personal secretary, he fathered a daughter, Flora, whom he never met or acknowledged.
He was a supporter of Preston North End, Tom Finney: My Autobiography, Tom Finney, Hachette UK, 2014, page 344 and in November 1988 paid a tribute to Tom Finney on This Is Your Life.
Parkinson was an active freemason.
Parkinson's daughter, Mary, was found dead at her home in Wandsworth on 10 December 2017, aged 57. Police did not treat the death as suspicious, and it was later reported that she had taken her own life.
He was interviewed about the rise of Thatcherism for the 2006 BBC TV documentary series Tory! Tory! Tory!
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