John Redwood - in Government

In Government

In the May 1993 Government reshuffle, Redwood was appointed to the cabinet as Secretary of State for Wales.

Redwood was an energetic although somewhat controversial Secretary of State for Wales. He deferred several road widening schemes which would have endangered the environment of rural areas in Wales. In 1995 he was at loggerheads with the Countryside Council for Wales because he had decided to cut its grant by 16%. He also launched a scheme to provide more funding for popular schools with high numbers of applicants and concentrated extra expenditure on health and education services away from administrative overheads. Redwood consequently gained a somewhat haughty reputation with apparent disregard for national feeling; this did not endear him further to some of the population, most memorably when in 1995 he returned £100,000,000 of Wales's block grant to the UK Treasury unspent, and when he made a speech in Cardiff in July 1993 stating that before State Aid be granted to single mothers, the father should first be contacted to help financially.

Redwood's most famous gaffe was his attempt in 1993 to mime to the Welsh national anthem at the Welsh Conservative Party conference when he clearly did not know the words. Redwood of course subsequently learned the anthem but, in August 2007, when an unconnected news story on Redwood was illustrated with the same clip, Tory activists complained and the BBC apologised to him. Redwood's tenure as Secretary of State for Wales was summarised humorously by Adam Price, an MP for Plaid Cymru, as "The most bizarre political appointment since Caligula made his horse a Senator."