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| Former Conservative minister Lord Prior dies | Former Conservative minister Lord Prior dies |
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| Former Conservative cabinet minister Lord Prior has died at the age of 89. | Former Conservative cabinet minister Lord Prior has died at the age of 89. |
| He served as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and Secretary of State for Employment under Margaret Thatcher in the early 1980s, having previously served in office under Edward Heath. | He served as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and Secretary of State for Employment under Margaret Thatcher in the early 1980s, having previously served in office under Edward Heath. |
| Although not a close ally of Mrs Thatcher, he held key roles during a period of industrial unrest and also during the height of the Troubles. | Although not a close ally of Mrs Thatcher, he held key roles during a period of industrial unrest and also during the height of the Troubles. |
| After leaving front politics, he was chair of defence business GEC. | After leaving front politics, he was chair of defence business GEC. |
| Jim Prior, as he was commonly known, was an MP for 28 years - representing the Suffolk constituencies of Lowestoft and Waveney from 1959 to 1987. | |
| The Conservative politician, who stood for the leadership in 1975, was an important figure in the first Thatcher administration between 1979 and 1983. | |
| He was not an ideological soul mate of the prime minister's, disagreeing with many of her economic policies and seeking a more conciliatory relationship with the trade unions. | |
| He was one of the so-called "wets" in her first cabinet generally hostile to proposed spending and tax cuts put forward by the PM and her Chancellor Geoffrey Howe. | |
| Instead, he was in favour of increased spending to boost jobs at a time when unemployment levels were rising sharply, topping more than three million in early 1982. | |
| By that point, Lord Prior had been moved to Northern Ireland in a reshuffle in September 1981, in which a number of leading wets were either sacked or demoted. | |
| He served in Northern Ireland for three years between 1981 and 1984 - a period in office marked by a number of high-profile IRA attacks in Northern Ireland and the mainland - including the 1982 Hyde Park bombing and the 1983 attack outside Harrods. | |
| He resigned from the Cabinet in 1984 and, after leaving the Commons, later sat in the House of Lords for nearly 30 years. | |
| His son David was a Conservative MP between 1997 and 2001 who also later joined the Lords. He is currently a junior health minister. |