Obituary: Lord Shutt, politician

David Shutt, Baron Shutt of Greetland, who has died at 78, gave every appearance of being the archetypal Yorkshireman and he enjoyed playing the role, but in reality he was far broader than the image.

A lifelong Liberal and later Liberal Democrat, he was also an active Quaker, with the commitment to peace and education that went with it. He used his positions as a politician and as director, and later chairman, of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust to advance several international projects as well as bringing practical support to the conversion of the Birchcliffe Baptist Chapel in Hebden Bridge into a conference centre and a community resource.

David Shutt joined the Liberal Party in Pudsey as a teenager and it was through the Pudsey Young Liberals that he met his wife, Margaret, whom he married in 1965. Between 1970 and 1992 he fought seven parliamentary elections unsuccessfully, in and around the Calder Valley and later in Pudsey. In 1973 he was elected to Calderdale Council, serving the Greetland and Stainland ward until 1990 and again from 1995 to 2003. He was Mayor of Calderdale in 1982-83, and in 1993 was appointed OBE for his political and public service.

He was appointed a life peer in 2000 and became the Liberal Democrat Chief Whip in the Lords in 2005. With the formation of the coalition in 2010 he joined the Government as Deputy Chief Whip in the Lords and was at first alarmed and then amused to discover that he thus acquired the title Captain of the Queen’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard, along with what he described as a “ludicrous” uniform complete with spurs. His final speech in the Lords, days before his death, was to move a successful amendment ensuring that young people of 16 and 17 would be added automatically to the electoral register so they could vote as soon as they turned 18.

Outside politics, Lord Shutt’s passion was for trams and trains, fostered by regular childhood holidays on the Isle of Man, which possessed both. Those holidays also sparked an abiding interest in islands and he enjoyed visiting unlikely ones, ticking them off his list, including going to Saint Helena as a member of a parliamentary delegation. Meanwhile, his love of music led him chair the Halifax Choral Society and to sing in the parliamentary choir.

He is survived by Margaret and by three children and six grandchildren.