Lord Haskins obituary: Passionate businessman who married into a Yorkshire farming family
Lord Haskins, who has died at 88, was a businessman and public servant who passionately championed Hull’s maritime heritage.
The son of a farmer, Christopher Robin Haskins grew up in County Wicklow, Ireland.
At Trinity College, Dublin, he met Gilda Horsley, and when they married he joined her family’s farming business, Northern Dairies, based then in Holme on Spalding Moor.
Haskins became a director in 1967, deputy chairman in 1974, and was chairman from 1980 to 2002, having helped build the firm into Northern Foods, one of Britain’s largest food manufacturers with such brands as Ski yoghurt and Bowyers sausages under its umbrella.
It is also among Marks & Spencer’s largest suppliers of ready meals.
During 2001, at the height of the foot and mouth disease epidemic, Haskins became ‘rural tsar’ to Prime Minister Tony Blair. He also served as chair of the Yorkshire Forward Regional Development Agency.
He was ennobled as a life peer with the title Baron Haskins of Skidby, in 1998. But in 2005 Labour expelled him for giving money to a Liberal Democrat candidate during the previous election.
Haskins had given £2,500 to the Liberal Democrat Danny Alexander, who beat Labour’s Dave Stewart in Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch & Strathspey.
Lord Haskins said Mr Alexander was a friend and that he also donated cash to Labour on the same day. He had been during Blair’s premiership one of Labour’s leading donors.
He subsequently sat as a crossbencher in the Lords, where he remained a powerful advocate for Hull and East Yorkshire.
One of his biggest contributions was his involvement in securing Siemens Gamesa’s investment in Hull’s Alexandra Dock, a deal that helped transform the city into a major UK hub for offshore wind turbine blade manufacturing.
The £160m facility, established in 2016 and later expanded, has created more than 1,000 direct jobs in the emerging green energy economy.
Haskins was also instrumental in setting up and securing support for the Hull Maritime project, aimed at preserving and celebrating the city’s 800-year seafaring history.
This year sees the fruition of the £70m project, with the Maritime Museum and its historic ships reopening to visitors after revamps.
A pro-European, Lord Haskins was a leading member of the Britain in Europe campaign and a former chairman of the European Movement. In 2016 he was chair of the Humber Local Enterprise Partnership.
He and Gilda had three sons and two daughters.