Frank Gordon Dobson (15 March 1940 – 11 November 2019) was a British politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Holborn and St Pancras from 1979 to 2015 (Holborn and St Pancras South until 1983). A member of the Labour Party, he served in the First Blair ministry as Secretary of State for Health from 1997 to 1999, and was the Labour nominee for Mayor of London in 2000, finishing third behind Conservative Steven Norris and the winner, Labour-turned-Independent Ken Livingstone. Dobson stood down from his Parliament seat at the 2015 general election.
Early life and career
Dobson was born in 1940 in Dunnington, York, the son of Irene (née Shortland) and John William Dobson. His father, a railwayman, died when Dobson was sixteen years old. Dobson attended Dunnington County Church of England Primary School and the Archbishop Holgate Grammar School (now Archbishop Holgate's School), where he was supported after the death of his father by a grant from the county council.
Member of Parliament
At the 1979 general election, Dobson was elected as MP for Holborn and St Pancras South (later Holborn and St Pancras). He voted for Tony Benn for Labour Deputy Leader in 1981, but thereafter became disillusioned and chose to align with what he called the "sane left".
He was the subject of controversy for living in a council flat while receiving a six-figure minister's salary. He continued to live there, despite owning a large property in Yorkshire. In an interview in July 2014, he responded to this criticism, saying: "I first lived there when we were subtenants of a subtenant of a private landlord. We were then sold to Camden council. What should I have done? Exercised the right to buy, which I voted against?" He also attacked Alan Milburn for making a "terrible mess" of the NHS. Milburn had been mentioned by Charles Clarke as a potential future Labour leader several hours earlier.
Dobson was criticised for hypocrisy after he spoke against Post Office closures, then voted for such closures in Parliament.
In the expenses scandal, he supported the Speaker of the House in his attempts to block exposure of expenses, arguing he was merely being scapegoated (for example, on BBC Radio 4 on 16 May 2009). He also supported the Speaker in allowing a warrant-less search of the offices of Conservative MP Damian Green.
A survey of his constituents revealed that in 2008, Dobson responded to 69 letters out of 269 sent through WriteToThem.com, putting him in 605th place out of 638 MPs for which data was available.
Personal life
Dobson's brother Geoff, a schoolteacher, died of liver cancer on the eve of Labour's landslide general election victory in 1997.
With his "portly frame, jovial expression and bright white beard", Dobson was sometimes compared jokingly to Father Christmas.
Dobson died at Homerton University Hospital in London on 11 November 2019, at the age of 79. His death drew tributes from former Labour prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, his constituency successor Keir Starmer, and Labour's current London mayor, Sadiq Khan.