Stanley Clinton-Davis, Lord Clinton-Davis, the former Labour minister, who has died aged 94, had a lively political career for more than half a century, as a councillor in his native London borough of Hackney, as a government trade minister in both houses of parliament, and as a UK member of the European Commission in Brussels. It was as a far-seeing environment commissioner in 1987 that he first drew attention to the extent of pollution in British water caused by sewage and waste disposal, warning prophetically of the speed and scale with which this problem was likely to grow.
Clinton-Davis was also a successful lawyer who founded and built a thriving practice of solicitors, and he used both law and politics to try to improve the quality of people’s lives and to defend and foster the environment.
