Long-serving Labour MP who defended his colleagues in the row over expenses
Like many others of his generation, the outspoken Labour MP for Middlesbrough, Stuart Bell, who has died of pancreatic cancer aged 74, was deprived of the opportunity of ministerial office by the length of time his party spent in opposition. Aged 58 when Tony Blair became prime minister, Bell was appointed as the second church estates commissioner – answering questions from MPs on legislative issues and other matters regarding the Church of England – and became a powerful figure in the management of the House of Commons.
Bell was not afraid to speak his mind, and attracted controversy on a number of issues, including the Cleveland child abuse scandal in 1987, the row over MPs' expenses, and the extent to which MPs should be freely accessible to their constituents. He was prepared, with a degree of sometimes foolhardy courage, to take a stand that did not conform to popular opinion.
The trajectory of his career was unusual. He was born in High Spen, north-west Durham, the son of Margaret and Ernest, a miner. Stuart's first job was as a clerk at a colliery in Chopwell, the village once described by a right-wing newspaper as the "reddest" in the country, full of "precocious Lenins".
Bell had a grammar school education at Hookergate, near Gateshead, and, after working at the pit, took a newspaper job on the Blaydon Courier and then a position as a night copytaker on the Daily Telegraph. His ambition was to become a reporter on Hansard, the official parliamentary record, and, to this end he secured an impressive 150-words-a-minute shorthand at the Pitman Training college in Holborn, London. He was diverted on his journey to the House of Commons by training as a lawyer, and was called to the bar at Gray's Inn in 1970.
His seven years in Paris – as a lawyer representing large multinational companies, learning French and earning a fortune – did not endear him to his less materially successful colleagues when he reached the Commons in 1983. He had fought the 1979 election, losing to Geoffrey Rippon in Hexham, then secured election in 1980 to Newcastle city council, where he was vice-chairman of the education committee. When Arthur Bottomley announced his intention to retire as MP for Middlesbrough, Bell was selected from a shortlist including a young Tony Blair, and won the seat with predictable ease in 1983. In his maiden speech, Bell quoted William Morris on socialism and spoke of the need for welfare reform.
His prospects looked promising when Roy Hattersley, then deputy Labour leader, made Bell his parliamentary private secretary. He shared the moderate political stance of his more experienced colleague, particularly on Europe, Nato and the need for the Labour party to reform itself. A member of the Fabian Society, Bell had written a booklet on Lords reform, published by the society in 1981, as he would later recall in his last speech on the same subject, in the Commons this July.
After just a year, he was promoted to the opposition frontbench team when Neil Kinnock appointed him as a spokesman on Northern Ireland. Bell's career faltered, however, when he resigned in 1987, after becoming embroiled in the Cleveland scandal, in which dozens of children were incorrectly diagnosed as having been sexually abused and were removed from their parents. Bell criticised the doctors and called for their suspension, taking the side of the families and children involved. Although he was personally criticised in the findings of the judicial inquiry for having made "intemperate and inflammatory remarks", it was probably owing to his noisy intervention that the inquiry was established. In 1992 he became frontbench spokesman on trade and industry.
Though Bell showed support for Blair – his autobiography is called Tony Really Loves Me – he was not invited to join the government in 1997. This was despite a letter he delivered to the new prime minister at his constituency home, to be read on the day of the election. Quoted in his book, it read: "I hope the wonderment of this day will live forever in your mind, you have deserved your success, you have a right to it, you are entitled to it and you will fashion and mould it not in your own self-interest but in the national interest."
As well as being the second church estates commissioner, a post he held until 2010, he also chaired the finance and services select committee (2000-10), and was a member of the House of Commons commission for the same period. When the parliamentary expenses scandal broke in 2009, he was appointed to the Speaker's committee for the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. He attempted to defend MPs in the expenses row, attacking the leak as "disgraceful", suggesting that the Legg inquiry was guilty of "retrospectivity" and that MPs could be justified in refusing to repay money they had claimed.
His most recent clash with public opinion was when it was disclosed last year that he had not held a constituency surgery since 1997. Although he was dubbed "Britain's laziest MP", Bell asserted that he regularly met his voters, but since he had been physically threatened by one constituent his dealings were all by appointment.
Knighted in 2004, Bell was awarded the Légion d'Honneur in 2006 for his contribution to British-French relations. He wrote a large number of political books, short stories and novels – including an erotic novel, Paris 69 (1973) – and was a shareholder in the company which published them.
He married Margaret Bruce, whom he had met at a pit village dance, in 1960, and they had a son, Ian, and a daughter, Yvonne. After their divorce, in 1980 he married Margaret Allan, with whom he had a son, Malcolm. Margaret and his children survive him.
• Stuart Bell, politician, born 16 May 1938; died 13 October 2012