A PLAQUE has been erected in Carnforth to mark the birthplace of Lord Cecil Parkinson.

Carnforth Town Council has put up the plaque at the late politician's childhood home in North Road.

Lord Parkinson was a Tory MP for 22 years. A cabinet minister in the 1980s, he later became Conservative Party Chairman.

A railwayman's son, he attended Lancaster Royal Grammar School before studying at Cambridge University.

Lord Parkinson was first elected as an MP for Enfield West in Middlesex, after a by-election in 1970. Earlier that year, he stood unsuccessfully as Conservative candidate for Northampton.

He would go on to take up several cabinet positions, including the role of trade secretary.

Lord Parkinson became a key member of Margaret Thatcher's government before revelations about an affair with his secretary, Sara Keays, in 1983 forced him to resign.

He later found himself at the centre of further controversy, after it emerged he had sought an injunction to prevent his biological daughter, Flora - who he had never formally recognised nor spoken to - from appearing in the media so as to prevent her being identified.

Her mother, Ms Keays, sued Lord Parkinson's estate for money on Flora's behalf after his death in January 2016, aged 84.

In his 1992 autobiography, Right at the Centre, Parkinson writes of his early life in Carnforth.