Edwina Currie (née Cohen; born 13 October 1946) is a British writer, broadcaster and former politician, serving as Conservative Party Member of Parliament for South Derbyshire from 1983 until 1997. She was a Junior Health Minister for two years, resigning in 1988 during the salmonella-in-eggs controversy.
By the time Currie lost her seat as an MP in 1997, she had begun a new career as a novelist and broadcaster. She is the author of six novels, and has also written four works of non-fiction. In September 2002, the publication of Currie's Diaries (1987–92) caused a sensation, as they revealed a four-year affair with colleague (and later Prime Minister) John Major between 1984 and 1988. Currie's record as Junior Health Minister was heavily scrutinised in the 2010s, and to a lesser extent at the time, for her decision to appoint Jimmy Savile as chairman of Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, where it is now known he molested and raped mentally unstable patients. Currie previously expressed her "full confidence" in him.
Currie remains an outspoken public figure, with a reputation for being "highly opinionated", and currently earns her living as an author and media personality.
Currie was born in south Liverpool to an Orthodox Jewish family, who "disowned her when she married a non-Jewish accountant". She is not particularly religious, stating in a February 2000 interview that she found "religious mumbo jumbo hard to swallow in any faith". She was educated at the Liverpool Institute High School for Girls in Blackburne House, in the Canning area of Liverpool.
Currie studied philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) at the University of Oxford, where she was an undergraduate student at St Anne's College, Oxford, and was a scholar. She was taught by Gabriele Taylor. Subsequently, she gained a Master of Science (MSc) degree in economic history from the London School of Economics.
From 1975 until 1986, Currie served as a Birmingham City Councillor for Northfield. In 1983, she stood for parliament as a Conservative Party candidate, and was elected as the member for South Derbyshire. Frequently outspoken, she was described as "a virtually permanent fixture on the nation's TV screen saying something outrageous about just about anything" and "the most outspoken and sexually interested woman of her political generation."
In September 1986, she became a Junior Health Minister. Among her comments over the next two years were that "Good Christian people who would not dream of misbehaving will not catch AIDS", that elderly people should wrap up warm in winter and that northerners die of "ignorance and chips".
Currie's record as Junior Health Minister was heavily scrutinised in the 2010s, and to a lesser extent at the time, for her decision in 1988 to appoint Jimmy Savile as chairman of Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, where it is now known he molested and raped mentally unstable patients. Currie previously expressed her "full confidence" in him. Savile had been given extraordinary power and a set of keys with complete access to every part of the hospital. He mingled repeatedly with the 800 or so patients, many teenage girls, some severely disturbed and medicated. In 2012, after Savile's death, a police investigation concluded that he had been one of Britain's most prolific sex offenders.
Salmonella-in-eggs controversy
Currie was forced to resign as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health in December 1988, after she issued a warning about salmonella in British eggs. The statement that "most of the egg production in this country, sadly, is now affected with salmonella" sparked outrage among farmers and egg producers, and caused egg sales in the country to decline rapidly, by 60 percent. The controversy gained her the nickname "Eggwina".
The loss of revenue led to the slaughter of four million hens. Although the statement was widely interpreted as referring to "most eggs produced", in fact it related to the egg production flock; there was indeed evidence that a mid-1980s regulation change had allowed salmonella to get a hold in flocks.
Long after the furore died down, in 2001, it was revealed that a covered-up Whitehall report produced months after Currie's resignation found that there had been a "salmonella epidemic of considerable proportions".
Post-ministerial career as an MP
In 1991, Currie became the first Conservative MP to appear on the BBC topical panel show Have I Got News for You. She appeared again two years later, in a special episode commemorating the release of Margaret Thatcher's memoirs, opposite fellow Liverpudlian (and Liverpool Institute alumnus) Derek Hatton.
During the 1992 general election campaign, Currie poured a glass of orange juice over Labour's Peter Snape shortly after an edition of the Midlands-based television debate show Central Weekend had finished airing. Speaking about the incident later, Currie said: "I just looked at my orange juice, and looked at this man from which this stream of abuse was emanating, and thought 'I know how to shut you up.'"
After the 1992 general election, she declined a request from Prime Minister John Major to take up a position as Minister of State for the Home Office.
In February 1994, Currie, a member of the Tory Campaign for Homosexual Equality (TORCHE), tabled an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill to lower the age of consent for male homosexual sexual acts from 21 to 16, which would mean an equal age of consent with opposite-sex couples if it passed. This amendment was defeated by 307 votes to 280, although a subsequent amendment resulted in the reduction of the age of consent for male homosexual acts from 21 to 18; final equalisation with an age of consent at 16 was voted through parliament in late 2000, becoming law in January 2001. In a speech in the House of Commons Currie said, "it is time to seize our homophobic instincts and chuck them on the scrapheap of history, where they belong".
In February 1994, Currie voted against the death penalty for murder, having previously voted and spoken in favour of it in July 1983; she had also supported it in June 1988 and December 1990.