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| Ex-Conservative chairman Cecil Parkinson dies aged 84 | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Former Conservative minister Lord Cecil Parkinson has died aged 84 after a battle with cancer. | |
| As party chairman under Margaret Thatcher in the early 1980s, he played a key role in the Tories' 1983 general election victory. | |
| He quit the cabinet soon after when it emerged his former secretary Sarah Keays was carrying his child. | |
| He returned to the government in 1987 serving as energy and then transport secretary. | |
| A family spokesman said: "Cecil passed away on January 22 after a long battle with cancer. | |
| "We shall miss him enormously. As a family, we should like to pay tribute to him as a beloved husband to Ann and brother to Norma, and a supportive and loving father to Mary, Emma and Joanna and grandfather to their children. | |
| "We also salute his extraordinary commitment to British public life as a member of parliament, cabinet minister and peer - together with a distinguished career in business." | |
| The BBC's assistant political editor Norman Smith said Cecil Parkinson was one of Margaret Thatcher's closest political allies but that his career was "undone" by the scandal that engulfed him following his affair with Ms Keays. | |
| Lord Parkinson was in the front rank of Conservative politics for three decades, first being elected to Parliament in 1970. | |
| After becoming a junior minister after Margaret Thatcher's 1979 election victory, he swiftly rose through the ranks and was named party chairman and elevated to the cabinet in 1981. He was a member of the war cabinet during the 1982 Falklands conflict. | |
| He was tipped to be named foreign secretary after overseeing the Tories' landslide election victory in 1983. But he was given the more junior role of trade and industry secretary and it later emerged he had fathered a child with his former secretary, prompting him to resign in October 1983. | |
| Former Conservative cabinet minister Michael Portillo said this scandal about his "definitely held back his career" but the fact that he was offered a cabinet post at all was testament to his closeness to the PM. | |
| He left the Commons in 1992. He briefly made a comeback as Conservative Party chairman after the Tories' general election hammering in 1997. |