Sir Malcolm Leslie Rifkind (born 21 June 1946) is a British politician who served in the cabinets of Margaret Thatcher and John Major from 1986 to 1997, and most recently as chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament from 2010 to 2015.
Rifkind was the MP for Edinburgh Pentlands from 1974 to 1997. He served in various roles as a Cabinet minister, including Secretary of State for Scotland from 1986 to 1990, Defence Secretary from 1992 to 1995, and Foreign Secretary from 1995 to 1997. In 1997, his party lost power and he lost his seat to the Labour Party. He attempted, unsuccessfully, to be re-elected in Pentlands in 2001; the constituency was abolished before the 2005 general election and he was adopted, and subsequently elected, as the Conservative candidate for Kensington and Chelsea. He announced his intention to seek the leadership of the party before the 2005 Conservative leadership election, but withdrew before polling began.
Rifkind stood for the Kensington seat and was elected at the 2010 general election with a majority of 8,616 votes. He became chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament. In January 2015 he was appointed by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) as a member of their Eminent Persons Panel on European Security. He did not stand in the 2015 general election. In December 2015, Rifkind was appointed a visiting professor by King's College, London in their Department of War Studies. He was invited to become a Distinguished Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). In July 2016, his memoirs, Power and Pragmatism, were published.
Early life Rifkind was born in Edinburgh to a Lithuanian-Jewish family that emigrated to Britain in the 1890s from the Russian Empire (now Lithuania); among his cousins were Leon and Samuel Brittan. He was educated at George Watson's College and the University of Edinburgh where he studied law before taking a postgraduate degree in political science (his thesis was on land apportionment in Southern Rhodesia). While at university he took part in an overland expedition to the Middle East and India. He also appeared on University Challenge.
He worked as an assistant lecturer at the University College of Rhodesia in Salisbury (now Harare) from 1967 to 1968. He was called to the Scottish Bar in 1970 and practised full-time as an Advocate until 1974. He was appointed a Queen's Counsel in 1985 and a member of the Privy Council in 1986. From 1970 to 1974 he was a member of Edinburgh City Council.
Member of Parliament Rifkind first stood for Parliament, unsuccessfully, in 1970 in the Edinburgh Central constituency. He entered Parliament in the February 1974 general election representing Edinburgh Pentlands for the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party. During the leadership election in 1975, he supported Edward Heath in the first round but when Heath withdrew Rifkind voted for Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher, on becoming leader, appointed Rifkind an Opposition front-bench spokesman on Scottish Affairs. He subsequently resigned from that position (along with the Shadow Scottish Secretary, Alick Buchanan-Smith) in protest at the decision of the Shadow Cabinet to vote against the Government's Bill for a Scottish Assembly. Rifkind argued that as, at that time, the Conservative Party supported the principle of a Scottish Assembly, it would have been preferable either to vote for the Second Reading of the Bill or to abstain, and try to improve the Bill. In the subsequent referendum on a Scottish Assembly, Rifkind voted in favour, but withdrew his support when the result of the referendum showed Scotland almost equally divided over the proposal.
Junior Minister
Rifkind was one of only five Ministers (Tony Newton, Kenneth Clarke, Patrick Mayhew and Lynda Chalker are the others) to serve throughout the whole 18 years of the Governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major. This represents the longest uninterrupted Ministerial service in Britain since Lord Palmerston in the early 19th century.
He was appointed Minister of Home Affairs and the Environment at the Scottish Office in the 1979 Thatcher Government. In that role, he was responsible for the passage of the Tenants' Rights (Scotland) Act which resulted in a massive increase of home ownership in Scotland as council tenants bought their homes. He was also responsible, under the Secretary of State George Younger, for relations with local government and for the police and prisons.
In 1982, at the time of the Falklands War, he was transferred to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, being promoted to Minister of State at the Foreign Office in 1983. At the Foreign Office, he served first under Francis Pym and then Sir Geoffrey Howe. Rifkind was responsible for Britain's relations with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the European Community, and sub-Saharan Africa. He assisted Sir Geoffrey Howe in persuading Thatcher to change the Government's policy on the Soviet Union, attended the Chequers meeting which decided to invite Soviet leaders to the United Kingdom, and was present at Chequers when Thatcher had her first meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev and decided that he was a Soviet leader with whom "she could do business".
Rifkind also had strong links with the Solidarity movement in Poland. In 1984, he made a Ministerial visit to Poland. Against the wishes of General Jaruzelski, the Polish Communist President, he insisted on laying a wreath at the grave of the murdered Polish priest Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, and had a meeting with three of the leaders of the banned Solidarity movement. Jaruzelski attacked Rifkind and cancelled a meeting he was due to have with him but Rifkind's meeting with Solidarity created a precedent that was followed by the West German Foreign Minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher and other Western ministers. This helped force the Polish Government to remove the ban on Solidarity and acknowledge the need for political reform and pluralism. Rifkind was, subsequently, decorated by the non-communist democratic Polish Government, as a Commander Cross of the Order of Merit for his support. In 1994 Rifkind, as Minister responsible for the European Community, was appointed by the Prime Minister as her personal representative on the Dooge Committee of the European Community. The Report of the Committee helped prepare the way for the achievement of the Single European Market.
Secretary of State for Scotland
In 1986 he was promoted into the cabinet as Secretary of State for Scotland. He gained a reputation as being a moderate voice on social and economic issues, and sometimes had disputes with Margaret Thatcher. As Secretary of State, he initiated major reforms in Scotland. These included the privatisation of the Scottish electricity industry and the Scottish Transport Group. He created Scottish Homes as the Government's housing agency; and Scottish Natural Heritage which combined both the Countryside Commission for Scotland and the Nature Conservancy Council. He also transformed the Scottish Development Agency into Scottish Enterprise with much greater private sector involvement. When Rifkind became Secretary of State his first task was to defuse a teachers dispute which was crippling Scottish education. He also sought to help the Ravenscraig steel mill which was threatened with closure. Rifkind opposed closure by the Government arguing that the whole steel industry should be privatised and that the future of individual plants would be determined by the companies that owned them in the private sector. In 1989, Rifkind lobbied for increased funding for Scottish Gaelic broadcasting but was shut down by Nigel Lawson, who Thatcher agreed with.
One of Rifkind's most difficult challenges was the demand from the public for the abolition of the domestic rates system. He supported the introduction of the Poll Tax, which the Cabinet had approved shortly before his appointment. He also agreed with the decision proposed by his predecessor, George Younger, that the new tax should be introduced a year earlier in Scotland than in England because of the political necessity to end the domestic rates. Rifkind subsequently accepted that the poll tax had been a major mistake by the Government. Throughout his term as Scottish Secretary, Rifkind, like Younger before him, and Ian Lang and Michael Forsyth in later years, was constrained by the political weakness of the Conservative Party in Scotland unlike in England. This problem was the underlying reason for his differences with Margaret Thatcher which increased, significantly, towards the end of her Prime Ministership. When Thatcher was challenged by Michael Heseltine for the Leadership of the Conservative Party, Rifkind voted for her. During the tense period that followed the first round of voting Rifkind was one of those who advised Thatcher that it would be best for her to stand down, and did not promise to support her if she stood for election. Thatcher considered his action treachery. In the subsequent Leadership election, he supported Douglas Hurd.
Secretary of State for Transport
In 1990, he was moved by John Major to be Secretary of State for Transport. One of his first responsibilities was to go into the Channel Tunnel, which was being constructed, and witness the first physical contact between those tunnelling from the French and British ends of the tunnel. One of his main priorities as Transport Secretary was to take forward the policy proposals for the privatisation of the railways. Rifkind supported privatisation but concluded that it would be a mistake to separate ownership of the infrastructure from the operating companies as track costs were a large percentage of their unavoidable costs. This view brought him into conflict with the Treasury and meant that Conservative proposals for privatisation were not ready by the time of the 1992 general election. The Prime Minister favoured the Treasury argument that competition between railway companies would be discouraged if one company owned the track. Rifkind maintained that the competition to rail would come from air and road and not from other rail companies. After Rifkind left the Ministry of Transport in 1992, the Treasury view prevailed, and this led to the creation of Railtrack.
Secretary of State for Defence