Obituary: James Ramsden, former Harrogate MP

As a defence minister, deputy to the disgraced John Profumo, he oversaw the end of National Service and the Army’s transformation into a regular unit, while back in Yorkshire he founded his own hunt, reviving the pre-war West of Yore at Bedale, in order to enjoy the sport without interfering with his parliamentary duties.

Born in Liverpool in 1923, James Edward Ramsden was a Yorkshire landowner who had been a director of the family brewery, Thomas Ramsden and Son of Halifax, before taking high office. The son of Capt Edward Ramsden of Breckamore Hall, Ripon, he went to Eton and then, after the war, up to Trinity College, Oxford, to read classics.

He entered politics while still working at the brewery, contesting unsuccessfully the Labour stronghold of Dewsbury in 1950 and 1951, but comfortably succeeding the ailing Christopher York in Harrogate at the 1954 by-election.

In 1959, upon the promotion of William Whitelaw to the whips’ office, he was elected joint secretary of the 1922 Committee and became Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Home Secretary, Rab Butler. The following year, Macmillan – whom he had visited in hospital after his prostate operation – appointed him to the War Office.

But Ramsden was less in favour during Edward Heath’s administration, losing his seat on the front bench but later, as a defence spokesman, leading the attack on Labour’s proposal to do away with the Territorial Army.

Away from Westminster, he was at various times president of the Northern Horticultural Society, chairman of the Harrogate Festival and served on the Historic Buildings Council for England.

From 1988, he chaired the Hackfall Trust, which has restored the woodland between Ripon and Masham after years of decline and damage caused by logging operations in the 1930s.

He re-formed the West of Yore hunt after having become joint master of the Bedale in 1959 but finding its practice of hunting on Mondays and Fridays incompatible with his work. In 1966 he bought 2,000 acres of Studley Royal estate near Ripon.

He married the late Juliet Ponsonby in 1949. They had three sons and two daughters.