Iain Duncan Smith

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Iain Duncan Smith Biography

After serving from 1992 until 1997 as a Member of the United Kingdom Parliament for the Chingford and Woodford Green constituency, this Scottish-born politician served as leader of the British Conservative Party and as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

After graduating from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, he served in Rhodesia and Northern Ireland as a member of the Scots Guard.

In 2003, he published a critically panned novel titled The Devil’s Tune.

His marriage to Betsy Fremantle resulted in four children.

In 2010, British Prime Minister David Cameron appointed Smith to the position of Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

Duncan Smith was born George Ian Duncan Smith on 9 April 1954 in Edinburgh, and added a second I to his name later in life. He is the son of Wilfrid George Gerald “W. G. G.” Duncan Smith, a decorated Royal Air Force flying ace of the Second World War, and Pamela Summers, a ballerina. His parents married in 1946. One of his maternal great-grandmothers was Ellen Oshey, a Japanese woman living in Beijing who married Pamela’s maternal grandfather, Irish merchant seaman Captain Samuel Lewis Shaw. Through Ellen and Samuel, Duncan Smith is related to Canadian CBC wartime broadcaster Peter Stursberg (whose book No Foreign Bones in China records their story) and his son, former CBC vice-president Richard Stursberg.

Sir George Iain Duncan Smith (born 9 April 1954), often referred to by his initials IDS, is a British Conservative Party politician. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from 2010 to 2016, he was previously the Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition from 2001 to 2003. He was first elected to Parliament at the 1992 general election as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Chingford – which he represented until the constituency’s abolition in 1997 – and he has since represented its successor constituency of Chingford and Woodford Green.

Duncan Smith was commissioned into Scots Guards as a second lieutenant on 28 June 1975, with the Personal Number 500263. He was promoted to lieutenant on 28 June 1977, and retired from the army on 2 April 1981, moving to the Regular Army Reserve of Officers. He ceased to belong to the Reserve of Officers on 29 June 1983.

Duncan Smith was educated at Bishop Glancey Secondary Modern, Solihull, until the age of 14, then until he was 18 at HMS Conway, a Merchant Navy training school on the Isle of Anglesey, where he played rugby union in the position of fly-half alongside Clive Woodward at centre. In 1975, he attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and was commissioned into the Scots Guards.

Duncan Smith was born in Edinburgh and served in the Scots Guards from 1975 to 1981, seeing tours in Northern Ireland and Rhodesia. He joined the Conservative Party in 1981, and eventually succeeded William Hague as Conservative Leader in 2001; he won the leadership election partly owing to the support of Margaret Thatcher for his Eurosceptic beliefs. Duncan Smith was the first Catholic to serve as a Conservative Leader, and the first Conservative leader to be born in Scotland since Arthur Balfour. In 2010, The Tablet named him one of Britain’s most influential Catholics.

Duncan Smith married Elizabeth “Betsy” Fremantle, daughter of the 5th Baron Cottesloe, in 1982. The couple have four children, and live in a country house belonging to his father-in-law’s estate in Swanbourne, Buckinghamshire.

At the 1987 general election Duncan Smith contested the constituency of Bradford West, where the incumbent Labour Party MP Max Madden retained his seat. At the 1992 general election he stood in the London constituency of Chingford, a safe Conservative seat, following the retirement of Conservative MP Norman Tebbit. He became a member of the House of Commons with a majority of nearly 15,000.

A committed Eurosceptic, Duncan Smith became a constant thorn in the side of Prime Minister John Major’s government of 1992 to 1997, opposing Major’s pro-European agenda at the time (something that would often be raised during his own subsequent leadership when he called for the party to unite behind him).

Duncan Smith remained on the backbenches until 1997, when the new Conservative leader William Hague brought him into the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Social Security Secretary. At the 1997 general election, boundary changes saw his constituency renamed Chingford and Woodford Green and his majority of 14,938 was reduced to 5,714. Duncan Smith realised the dangers that he and neighbouring Conservative MPs faced, so redoubled his efforts: “We spent the final week of the campaign working my seat as if it was a marginal. I held on but everywhere around me went.” (Notable Conservatives defeated in North London included Defence Secretary Michael Portillo, Education Minister Robin Squire, Foreign Office Minister Sir Nicholas Bonsor, Sir John Michael Gorst, Sir Rhodes Boyson, Sir Michael Neubert, Ian Twinn, Hartley Booth, Hugh Dykes and Vivian Bendall.) In 1999, Duncan Smith replaced John Maples as Shadow Defence Secretary.

During his leadership campaign in 2001, he changed his stance on the now-repealed Section 28 from opposing repeal to supporting it. In 2003, Duncan Smith’s decision to compromise on repeal of Section 28 was described as “illogical” and “messy” by other Conservative MPs.

Due to the September 11 attacks, the announcement of Duncan Smith gaining the Conservative leadership was delayed until 13 September 2001. In November 2001, he was one of the first politicians to call for an invasion of Iraq and held talks in Washington, DC, with senior US officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz.

William Hague resigned after the Labour Party continued in government with another large parliamentary majority following the 2001 general election. In September 2001, Duncan Smith was the successful candidate in the Conservative Party leadership election. Although he was initially viewed as an outsider, his campaign was bolstered when Margaret Thatcher publicly gave her support for him. His victory in the contest was helped by the fact that his opponent in the final vote of party members was Kenneth Clarke, whose strong support for the European Union was at odds with the views of much of the party.

Duncan Smith has been reported to support both Tottenham Hotspur, where in 2002 he held a season ticket, and Aston Villa.

The 2002 Conservative Party conference saw an attempt to turn Duncan Smith’s lack of charisma into a positive attribute, with his much-quoted line, “do not underestimate the determination of a quiet man”. During PMQs, Labour backbenchers would raise their fingers to their lips and say “shush” when he was speaking. The following year, Duncan Smith’s conference speech appeared to have abandoned this technique in favour of an aggressive hard-man approach which received several ovations from party members in the hall. “The quiet man is here to stay, and he’s turning up the volume”, Duncan Smith said.

In the 2002 and 2003 local elections, the only elections in which Duncan Smith led the party, the Conservatives gained 238 and 568 extra seats on local councils, respectively, primarily in England.

According to the BBC, Duncan Smith’s biography on the Conservative Party website and his entry in Who’s Who originally stated that he had studied at the University of Perugia in Italy. A BBC investigation in 2002 found this statement to be untrue. In response to the BBC story, Duncan Smith’s office stated that he had in fact attended the Università per Stranieri, a different institution in Perugia, for a year. He did not complete his course of study, sit exams, or gain any qualifications there. Duncan Smith’s biography, on the Conservative Party website, also stated that he was “educated at Dunchurch College of Management” but his office later confirmed that he did not gain any qualifications there either, that he completed six separate courses lasting a few days each, adding up to about a month in total. Dunchurch was the former staff college for GEC Marconi, for whom Duncan Smith worked in the 1980s.

After months of speculation over a leadership challenge, Duncan Smith called upon critics within his party to either gather enough support to trigger a no-confidence motion or get behind him. A no confidence vote was called on Wednesday 29 October 2003, which Duncan Smith lost by 90 votes to 75. He stepped down eight days later, with Michael Howard being confirmed as his successor. The same week his novel The Devil’s Tune was released to considerable negative reception.

These worries came to a head in October 2003. Journalist Michael Crick revealed that he had compiled embarrassing evidence, this time of dubious salary claims Duncan Smith made on behalf of his wife that were paid out of the public purse from September 2001 to December 2002. The ensuing scandal, known as “Betsygate”, weakened his already tenuous position.

Despite the gains made in the 2003 local elections, Crispin Blunt, the Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry resigned. He called Duncan Smith’s leadership a “handicap” as he had “failed to make the necessary impact on the electorate,” and said that he should be replaced.

Duncan Smith said in December 2002 that he intended to be party leader for a “very long time to come”. This did little to quell the speculation in Westminster regarding his future. Amid speculation that rebel MPs were seeking to undermine him, Duncan Smith called on the party to “Unite or die.” On 23 February 2003, The Independent on Sunday newspaper published an article saying that 14 MPs were prepared to sign a petition for a vote of no confidence in Duncan Smith (25 signatories were then needed) for a vote on his removal as leader.

After his term as party leader, Duncan Smith established the Centre for Social Justice in 2004. This organisation is a centre-right think tank which works with small charities with the aim of finding innovative policies for tackling poverty. (Duncan Smith served as the centre’s chairman until he joined the Cabinet in May 2010, and remains its Life Patron.) He also served under Michael Howard on the Conservative Party’s advisory council, along with John Major, William Hague and Kenneth Clarke.

Duncan Smith was re-elected comfortably in Chingford and Woodford Green at the 2005 general election, almost doubling his majority.

On 7 December 2005, Duncan Smith was appointed Chairman of the Social Justice Policy Group, which was facilitated by the Centre for Social Justice. Duncan Smith’s Deputy Chair was Debbie Scott, the Chief Executive of the charity Tomorrow’s People. The group released two major reports, Breakdown Britain and Breakthrough Britain. Breakdown Britain was a 300,000 word document that analysed what was going wrong in the areas of Economic Dependence and Unemployment, Family Breakdown, Addiction, Educational Failure, Indebtedness, and the Voluntary Sector.

In September 2006 he was one of fourteen authors of a report concerning Anti-Semitism in Britain. He was also one of the only early supporters of the Iraq surge policy. In September 2007, he called for Britain to withdraw from the war in Afghanistan and to fight in the war in Iraq indefinitely.

In December 2010, Duncan Smith studied a state-sponsored relationship education programme in Norway, under which couples were forced to “think again” and confront the reality of divorce before formally separating. The policy has been credited with reversing Norway’s trend for rising divorce rates and halting the decline of marriage in the country over the past 15 years. Duncan Smith said he was keen to explore ways in which similar approaches could be encouraged in Britain. Officials pointed out that such a programme would be expensive but that an approach could reduce the long-term cost of family breakdown, which has been estimated at up to £100 billion. Duncan Smith said couples in Norway were able to “work through what is going to happen with their children”, which has “a very big effect on their thinking”. “Many of them think again about what they are going to embark on once they really understand the consequences of their actions subsequently,” he said.

He also announced a far more radical series of reforms intended to simplify the benefits and tax credits scheme into a single payment to be known as Universal Credit. A major aim of welfare reform was to ensure that low earners would always be better off in employment. “After years of piecemeal reform the current welfare system is complex and unfair,” said Duncan Smith, citing examples of people under the existing system that would see very little incremental income from increasing their working hours due to withdrawal of other benefits. Outlining the scheme in more detail in November 2010, Duncan Smith promised “targeted work activity for those who need to get used to the habits of work” and sanctions, including the possible removal of benefits for up to three years for those who refused to work. He said welfare reform would benefit all those who “play by the rules” and ensure “work always pays more” by easing the rate at which benefits are withdrawn as income rises.

He also announced a far more radical series of reforms intended to simplify the benefits and tax credits scheme into a single payment to be known as Universal Credit. A major aim of welfare reform was to ensure that low earners would always be better off in employment. “After years of piecemeal reform the current welfare system is complex and unfair,” said Duncan Smith, citing examples of people under the existing system that would see very little incremental income from increasing their working hours due to withdrawal of other benefits. Outlining the scheme in more detail in November 2010, Duncan Smith promised “targeted work activity for those who need to get used to the habits of work” and sanctions, including the possible removal of benefits for up to three years for those who refused to work. He said welfare reform would benefit all those who “play by the rules” and ensure “work always pays more” by easing the rate at which benefits are withdrawn as income rises.

Following the 2010 general election, the Conservative Party formed a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats, with David Cameron as Prime Minister. Cameron appointed Duncan Smith to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with responsibility for seeing through changes to the welfare state.

Many Conservative MPs came to consider him incapable of winning an election when he was Conservative Party Leader. In 2003, Conservative MPs passed a vote of no confidence in his leadership; he immediately resigned, and was succeeded by Michael Howard. Returning to the backbenches, he founded the centre-right Centre for Social Justice, a think tank independent of the Conservative Party, and became a published novelist. On 12 May 2010, the new Prime Minister, David Cameron, appointed Duncan Smith to serve in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. He resigned from the Cabinet on 18 March 2016, in opposition to Chancellor George Osborne’s proposed cuts to disability benefits.

Duncan Smith said in February 2011 that it was “absurd and damaging” for ministers not to extol the benefits of marriage for fear of stigmatising those who choose not to marry. Duncan Smith said: “We do a disservice to society if we ignore the evidence which shows that stable families tend to be associated with better outcomes for children. There are few more powerful tools for promoting stability than the institution of marriage.” He added that “The financial costs of family breakdown are incredibly high. But what is most painful to see is the human cost – the wasted potential, the anti-social behaviour, and the low self-esteem.”

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