The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Twiggy and Vidal Sassoon may have shaped the social scenery of the Swinging Sixties. But Leo Abse, who has died at the age of 91, did as much as anyone in that decade to tilt Britain on to a more liberal axis.

From his berth as a Labour MP in Wales for almost 30 years, he pioneered legislation that left Britain a less repressive place. Homosexual men, in particular, had lived as pariahs until Abse’s landmark Sexual Offences (Homosexual Reform) Bill liberated them from the threat of persecution. He helped to make it easier for couples in unhappy marriages to divorce. His Family Planning Act enabled local authorities to open family planning clinics and to distribute contraceptives.

Most remarkably, Abse did all this from the obscurity of the back benches. Having a safe seat and no desire to climb the greasy pole to high office, he was free to pursue his passions.

He made full use of this freedom. He steered more backbench socially reforming legislation on to the statute book than any other individual MP in the 20th century. This spurred James Callaghan to tell him: “You do much more good in terms of human happiness than 90 per cent of the work done in Parliament on political issues.”

Nobody could accuse this son of a Jewish solicitor and cinema-owner of shunning controversy. Some survey Abse’s handiwork and grimace. By giving homosexuality an official blessing and by liberalising divorce, he is responsible, in their eyes, for sowing a corrosive permissiveness. In truth, Abse did what few politicians can claim. He advanced individual freedoms and improved the quality of countless British lives.