Sir Peter Tapsell obituary

Each time Sir Peter Tapsell, the veteran Conservative MP, rose to speak in his later years, it was almost as if the Commons had been transported back five decades.Before Margaret Thatcher’s election victory in 1979 Tapsell had endured a brief and unhappy period as a member of the Tories’ opposition Treasury team, surrounded by monetarists – “the single biggest mistake I made in politics in my life,” he said later – before quietly resigning.