Mrs Thatcher pays tribute to 'outstanding parliamentarian' Lord Biffen

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The former Prime Minister described him as an 'outstanding Parliamentarian' and former colleagues hailed him as the most outstanding leader of the Commons of his age.

As John Biffen, the former MP for North Shropshire held the post during the first two Thatcher governments, but fell out of favour in the mid-1980s.

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Baroness Thatcher described Lord Biffen as an 'oustanding parliamentarian'

In May 1986, after the Tories suffered heavy losses in local government elections and in two by-elections, Lord Biffen alarmed colleagues by describing the result as 'Black Thursday', insisting the Conservatives needed to fight the next general election on a more 'balanced ticket' and that 'no one seriously supposes that the Prime Minister would be Prime Minister throughout the entire period of the next Parliament'.

He was eventually sacked in 1987 and Lady Thatcher's press secretary famously described him as 'semi-detached'.

In her memoirs described Biffen's call for a balanced ticket as 'foolish' and 'a recipe for paralysis'.

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Lord Biffen's 'eloquence' will be remembered, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said

But yesterday the former Prime Minister paid fulsome tribute to her former minister, who died at 5am yesterday after being taken to Royal Shrewsbury Hospital with septicaemia.

She said: "John was an outstanding Parliamentarian, a widely respected Leader of the House of Commons and a great British patriot."

Tory leader David Cameron said Lord Biffen was a 'thoughtful and principled politician' and a 'great House of Commons man'.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: "John Biffen will be remembered as a great Parliamentarian and a much respected Leader of the House of Commons.

"For five years he served as Leader of the Commons bringing eloquence, modesty and humour to the debates of the Commons and winning the admiration of all sides."

His former Cabinet colleague Lord Heseltine paid tribute to a 'very cerebral' politician.

"John was not what you would call a party politician; he wasn't in the business of scoring easy points. He was a very cerebral politician, he had a very fine mind and... a very original mind," he told the BBC.

"I remember very vividly in Cabinet: by and large you know what people are going to say, because they are going to take the departmental brief, but you could never tell when he started to speak where his conclusion was going to be."