Darlington MP and former Health Secretary Alan Milburn is standing down at the next election. In an exclusive interview with Peter Barron, Editor of The Northern Echo, he explains why.

WHEN Alan Milburn told his local party at 10am on Saturday that he would not be standing at the next general election, it was an announcement that took many by surprise.

There is, of course, another way of looking at it – why on earth would Mr Milburn not want to get out in view of the fact that:

■ MPs are the scourge of the nation in the wake of the expenses scandal;

■ There is more embarrassment to come this week when MPs are made to reveal how much they earn from the private sector – and Mr Milburn is one of the top “outside earners”;

■ Barring a comeback of seismic proportions, Labour will lose the next election. And with a 22 per cent swing to the Conservatives and United Kingdom Independence Party at the European elections, Mr Milburn’s 10,404 Darlington majority looks fragile for the first time since he took the traditionally marginal seat from Michael Fallon in 1992.

Mr Milburn, who became Health Secretary under Tony Blair, is getting off a sinking ship.

At least, that’s what his critics will declare.

Mr Milburn, naturally, paints a different picture.

He insists he is going because, at 51, he wants “the chance to balance my work and my family life with the time to pursue challenges other than politics”.

“There is always going to be flak in politics,”

he says. “Westminster is under siege, but I’m not walking away because it is tougher than normal – I simply feel that it is time to move on.”

He refutes the suggestion that the timing might be linked to strict new rules over lucrative “second jobs” which come into force this week (Mr Milburn earns substantial sums via his company AM Strategy Limited – £30,000-ayear as an advisor to Lloyds pharmacy, £35,000 working for Bridgepoint Capital Limited, £25,000 advising the manufacturers of Pepsi, and up to £25,000 from newspaper articles).

“If anyone is expecting some kind of shockbang revelations, they are going to be sorely disappointed because there is no new information to come out through the new rules that isn’t already known about me,” he says.

Nevertheless, the financial cushion of AM Strategies has clearly made the decision to stand down easier, although Mr Milburn insists there is “no definite game plan”. “I honestly don’t know what I’ll do. I’m no spring chicken, but I’m not ready for the knacker’s yard either.

There are big challenges out there.”

Mr Milburn is a committed family man. He has two teenage sons, Joe and Danny, and – despite speculation that there was more to it – it was pressures on his family life which were behind him quitting as Health Secretary in 2003.

His decision to stand down as an MP comes at a time when his wife, Ruth, an NHS consultant psychiatrist, is taking a career-break.

“That’s a coincidence,” says Mr Milburn. “I know people will read more into it, but it comes down to a very simple thing about the need to move on in a way that gives the party enough time to find a new candidate.”

And yet there is still unfinished work. Asked to cite his proudest local achievements, Mr Milburn points to “huge investment” in schools in Darlington, plus the building of a new college, and he is eager to see the development of a university campus before he leaves.

There is little doubt that having as its MP an influential “national player” has worked in Darlington’s favour when it has come to pressing the town’s case in the corridors of power.

“The town is a better place than it was in 1992 and I hope people agree that I’ve played my part,” he says. “Here we are in the midst of a terrible recession and unemployment is half the rate of 1992.

“I lobbied hard for the Eastern Transport Corridor, and Darlington Memorial Hospital is now regarded as one of the top performing hospitals in the country. I don’t need plaques around the town, saying I did this and that, but I hope people feel I did right by the town.”

There are those, of course, who would disagree.

Political opponents argue that his recent record of taking part in Parliamentary debates and votes isn’t good enough, and his decision to live in Northumberland has made him detached from his constituency.

When news of his decision to stand down was published on The Northern Echo’s website yesterday morning, the first comment read: “Hopefully, we’ll have an MP next time who actually lives in the town and who doesn’t have countless other jobs to distract him from what we pay for.”

Within the past week, the paper has published a letter by Darlington Liberal Democrat councillor Mike Barker, pointing out that Mr Milburn has made only one speech in Parliament during the past year and voted in only 58 per cent of the divisions in the Commons.

Mr Milburn swats the criticism away. “People can make their own judgements about whether I’ve been a good, bad or indifferent MP. There are lots of things people want from their Members of Parliament, but there are also lots of things MPs need for their families. I moved with my family out of the constituency in 1996 and I won elections in 1997, 2001 and 2005 – and I’m confident Labour will hold the seat in 2010.”

By the time the next election comes along – and we find out what Darlington and the rest of the country really wants – Mr Milburn will have served 18 years as its MP.

Reflecting on those years, he becomes most passionate when looking back at his four years as Health Secretary and, in particular, a local tragedy which became the catalyst for transforming NHS waiting times for heart bypass surgery.

Darlington father-of-two Ian Weir, a photographer with The Northern Echo and a personal friend of Mr Milburn, died of a second heart attack after waiting nearly eight months for a triple bypass. The average waiting time in other parts of Europe was three months.

“It was a very, very seminal moment for me,”

says Mr Milburn. “The first decision I took as Secretary of State was to tell them to go back to the drawing board over heart operations.

“Initially, they said the best they could do was cut waiting times to six to nine months and I told them that wasn’t good enough. It was done largely with what happened to Ian in mind and that is the power of politics – being able to make a difference.”

Ian Weir died ten years ago this month. The difference, a decade on, is that waiting times are now in line with the rest of Europe.

“We changed things, but that’s in the past. To win the next election, the Labour Party needs to find a clear agenda for the future, and speak for the majority, in the way Tony Blair did,” he says.

A long-established critic of Gordon Brown, he refuses to be drawn on the question of the leadership, other than to say he expects Mr Brown still to be in charge at the next election.

“It’s not about one individual – it’s about the party proving it still has wind in its sails and setting out what it’s going to do in the future.”

For Darlington, the future means having a new MP for the first time in nearly two decades.