Page 760 - Liverpool Philharmonic 22-23 Season Coverage Book

party Aids group, was vice-president of the Haemophilia Society, and prior to joining the
government served on the General Medical Council.

The son of a bishop, Key accepted female clergy, wanted a workplace crèche in the Commons and
opposed caning. But he sought tighter restrictions on abortion (while supporting the morning-after
pill), tough action against squatters, and the return of conscription. He opposed the War Crimes
Bill, and was firmly against joining the euro.

Simon Robert Key was born in Plymouth on April 22 1945, the son of Maurice Key, later Bishop of
Sherborne and of Truro, and the former Joan Dence.

Aged 10, he was on a prep school walk along Swanage beach when he and six friends discovered an
old wartime mine. It detonated, and only Key, who sustained injuries to his back, and one other
boy survived.

He attended Salisbury Cathedral School – singing in the choir with his future colleague Michael
Mates – and then Sherborne School.

Key read Economics at Clare College, Cambridge, staying on to qualify as a teacher. From 1967 to
1969 he taught in Edinburgh at Loretto, after which he was a master at Harrow for 14 years until
his election to Parliament. While at Harrow he was a governor of several state schools, and the
special school at Great Ormond Street Hospital.

He joined the Conservative Party during the miners’ dispute of 1974 after seeing their leader Mick
McGahey confront Heath on television, and in 1979 contested Holborn and St Pancras South. He
chaired Harrow Central Conservatives in 1980-82, and served on the executive of the party’s
National Union.

In 1982 Key was selected for Salisbury in place of the retiring Sir Michael Hamilton, ahead of the
future Cabinet ministers Michael Howard and Peter Lilley. “Half the selection committee had been
confirmed by my father,” he explained.
At the 1983 election, he took the seat with a 7,174 majority over a Liberal – reviving the custom of
singing a victory song of the Wiltshire Regiment in the local dialect.