The Baron Haskins, life peer, has died aged 88.
He was a businessman, latterly Chairman of Northern Foods from 1980-2002. He was raised to the peerage as Baron Haskins, of Skidby in the County of the East Riding of Yorkshire, on 25 July 1998.
Christopher Robin Haskins, a former chair of the Humber Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) and of Northern Foods, was born in Dublin, 30 May, 1937. He joined Wakefield-headquartered Northern Foods – then known as Northern Dairies in 1962 – becoming a director of the firm in 1967, deputy chairman in 1974, then chairman from 1980 to 2002.
During 2001, at the height of the foot and mouth disease epidemic, he became Prime Minister Tony Blair's 'rural tsar'. Lord Haskins retired from the Lords on 1 December 2020.
Sometime a member of the Labour Party. A dedicated supporter of the Humber region, Lord Haskins used his Humber LEP role to widely promote the region’s interests and ensure the views of its businesses were represented in government. He won the Ambassador award at TheBusinessDesk.com’s Business Masters Awards in 2015.Many tributes have been paid to him, with friends and colleagues describing him as an “inspirational leader”.
He married in 1959, Gilda Horsley (born 1936), daughter of Alec Stewart Horsley (1902-1993), and his wife the former Ida Seward Howitt, by whom he had two sons.
