Andrew Rowe was the left-leaning Conservative MP for Faversham and Mid Kent who championed the rights of the under-privileged and challenged Margaret Thatcher over racism in the party. Rowe had an independent spirit out of keeping with the Tory leadership during his 18 years in Parliament from 1983 to 2001.

A liberal Conservative and regular critic of the party, he was painted by the media as a potential defector under the troubled Government of John Major, but he remained fiercely loyal to the party. Rowe was an Old Etonian and former Eton schoolmaster and a lecturer in social policy at the University of Edinburgh who campaigned on behalf of minority groups, did much to support small businesses, and was a great enthusiaist for the European Union.

Andrew John Bernard Rowe was the son of a stockbroker and personnel manager who had been born in the East End of London. Rowe and his sister were brought up by his grandmother and aunts in Henley-on-Thames after his parents separated at the start of the Second World War. He won an exhibition to Eton where he flourished. He then served as a sub-lieutenant in the Navy during his National Service before reading History at Merton College, Oxford. At Oxford he was secretary of the Oxford Union and became involved in the Conservative Party.

After Oxford, he returned to Eton as an assistant master for four years — teaching the future ruler of Nepal, King Birendra — before joining the Civil Service as a principal in the Scottish Office. At the Scottish Office he established children’s panels for the hearing of under-age criminal cases, a model that has been replicated internationally.

In 1968, he became a lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Edinburgh, an unusual position for a Tory, and was seconded to the Voluntary Services Unit which was being reinvigorated under Lord Windelsham.

Rowe then joined Conservative Central Office as director of community affairs where he was responsible for the voluntary sector, ethnic minorities and fostering relations with the unions, Under his lead, unionists disenchanted with the “loony Left” joined the Tories. This culminated in a rally of Conservative trade unionists at Wembley in 1979.

That same year he was quoted in a trailer for a BBC documentary about the Tories saying: “I see my job as trying to leave the party marginally less racist than I found it.” This marked the start of a difficult relationship with Margret Thatcher and his uncompromising position as a party critic and pro-European meant that he never achieved a ministerial position.

In 1983 he was elected Conservative member for Mid Kent, which he held until 1997, and then for the new seat of Faversham & Mid Kent until 2001, when he retired due to illness.

An enthusiast for small independent family-run businesses, he founded the Conservative Small Business Bureau in 1976, later becoming its vice-chairman, and for a decade until 1990 he edited Small Business. He was a delegate to the Council of Europe for 12 years, urging early ratification of the Maastricht treaty (1992). He was against devolution without proportionate rights for England and called the formation of the National Assembly for Wales a mess.

Rowe was Parliamentary Private Secretary for eight years to Edward Heath, Richard Needham and Earl Ferrers. He was active on several key Parliamentary select committees: International Development — where he was in turn secretary, vice-chairman and chairman — Employment, and Health. He also served on the Public Accounts Committee. He chaired two all party parliamentary groups on personal social services and franchise development.

Frequently taking an independent line, Rowe opposed devolution, capital punishment and caning in schools. He proposed the repeal of the blasphemy laws, supported the ordination of divorced men, encouraged more active citizenship to counter adverse trends in modern society and favoured reducing the age of homosexual consent to 16 years.

Outside Westminster, Rowe served many organisations, notably the Alcohol Education and Research Council, the Pre-Retirement Association and the Council of the Save the Children Fund. He was a trustee of Community Service Volunteers for more than 15 years. Rowe was on the steering committee of the UK Youth Parliament, which would sit during parliamentary recesses and became a founder/trustee and co-chairman.

Rowe was the founding chairman of The Millennium Arts Festival for Schools. He campaigned on behalf of children at risk and the disabled. He also favoured tax and recruitment changes to help mothers not to have to make an early return to work.

A sufferer of prostate cancer for many years, he used his experience to call for better treatment in the NHS.

He is survived by his second wife, Sheila, two stepdaughters and Rowe’s son from his first marriage to Alison Boyd, Nicholas, who appeared as Sherlock Holmes in Stephen Spielberg’s Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) and in Guy Richie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)

Andrew Rowe, MP for Faversham and Mid Kent, 1983-2001, was born on September 11, 1935. He died of prostate cancer on November 21, 2008, aged 73