Europhile farmer and businessman whose Northern Foods supplied ready meals to Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Waitrose
Chris Haskins, Lord Haskins, was perhaps the most prominent business supporter of Tony Blair’s New Labour project, brought in to Downing Street at the start of his administration to advise on cutting red tape, and later as “rural tsar” in the wake of the devastating foot and mouth outbreak of 2001. What Blair would praise as Haskins’s invaluable “no nonsense approach” was honed during 40 years building up Northern Foods into Britain’s leading food manufacturer. There he was credited with developing the chilled food techniques that have made possible today’s enormous growth in ready meals and convenience foods.
Haskins, who has died aged 88, combined the acumen of an entrepreneur and enlightened business manager with a socialist conscience. Alongside it went a compulsion to tell the truth as he saw it, which could sometimes get him into difficulties. He distanced himself from the Labour government after what he called the “disgrace” of anti-terrorist legislation in the early 2000s, and the Iraq war, and in a typically unguarded New Statesman interview, he said of Blair: “He wants everyone to love him.” And of David Blunkett, the former home secretary: “You have to watch him like a hawk.”
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