Surprise choice for transport
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• The Prime Minister's choice of John Peyton as Minister of Transport is a surprise appointment.
Although a former chairman of the Conservative backbench MPs transport committee, Mr Peyton's preoccupations in recent years have been the coal and steel industries.
His only incursion into the transport field which can immediately be recalled was his sponsorship in 1962 of a Bill to amend the road vehicle licensing laws, to enable a group of people legally to hire a.. taxi regularly to take them to and from work when bus services were inconvenient.
Mr Peyton was Parliamentry secretary, Ministry of Power, from 1962-64, and when the Conservatives went into opposition was frontbench spokesman on the same subject until 1966.
He was one of the group of Conservative MPs who became known as the "Fuel Furies" for their unremitting. attacks on Labour's policies for the power industries.
Tall, and languid in manner, Mr Peyton has a minor reputation in the Commons as a wit. This is a result of his sly—and sometimes successful—digs at Mr Wilson and other Minister i at question time.
Mr Peyton is 51 and a barrister. He was educated at Eaton and Trinity College, Oxford. He is a director of Radiation, the heating equipment firm.
He served throughout the war with the 15 /19 Hussars and was a prisoner-of-war in Germany. He has been MP for Yeovil since 1951 having previously unsuccessfully contested Bristol central ,in 1950. He has been married twice.
As Minister of Transport he will draw a salary of £8500.