More positive about Europe than many Tory politicians of his generation, Lord Kingsland was the MEP for Shropshire and Stafford from 1979 to 1994 and led the British contingent of Conservative MEPs during the second half of his tenure. After losing his seat in the European Parliament he was elevated to the House of Lords and, in 1997, became Shadow Lord Chancellor. In 2008 he became the opposition spokesman on legal affairs, a post he held at his death.

An eminent barrister with strong academic credentials who developed expertise in the field of international economics, Kingsland impressed politicians and administrators in Brussels and Whitehall with his attempts to reconcile the increasingly divergent Euro-factions of the Conservative party in an era dominated by reverberations from Margaret Thatcher’s robustly Eurosceptic Bruges speech, the Black Wednesday ejection of sterling from the exchange rate mechanism, and the much-disliked Maastricht treaty.

An active, impressive and well-liked figure, Kingsland was due to speak this week from the opposition front bench on the Coroners and Justice Bill and, had he lived, may have played an important Government role in the House of Lords for the Conservatives if, as many expect, they win the next general election.

Lord Kingsland was born Christopher James Prout in 1942. After graduating from Sevenoaks School in 1960, Kingsland went on to complete three economics degrees. He went first to Manchester University (1960-63), then, assisted by a scholarship, to Columbia University, New York, in 1963-64, and finally, again as a scholar, to The Queen’s College, Oxford (1964-66). In 1966 he moved to Washington to put his economics into practice at an agency of the United Nations, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

During his three years there Kingsland travelled extensively, and most significantly, to Yugoslavia. He made the country the subject of the book he published in 1985. Market Socialism in Yugoslavia was the expansion of his earlier doctorate thesis on the operation of markets in a self-managed economy.

In 1969 he returned to England and university life. He was awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship at the University of Sussex, after which he became a law lecturer. He was called to the Bar in 1972 as a member of the Middle Temple and joined the Francis Taylor building where he remained for the rest of his working life. Initially, he practised in the field of European competition law, until he took silk in 1988 and gravitated towards the specialist areas of planning, environment and waste.

Kingsland’s career at the Bar interpreting the law came alongside a firm commitment as a legislator. In 1979 he won, as a Conservative, the European parliamentary seat of Shropshire and Staffordshire. Compared with many of his colleagues, Kingsland was young and inexperienced. Yet colleagues were impressed by his grasp of detail and seeming lack of personal ambition. Kingsland’s skill as a politician, however, came to the fore when he served on the Conservative Party’s manifesto committee and the strategy committee which produced the acclaimed dossier entitled Leading Europe into the 1990s.

By 1987 Kingsland was chairman of the European Democratic Group and later vice-chairman of the European People’s Party, two groupings of Euro-politicians with views close to the British Conservative MEPs. In 1994, after extensive European constituency boundary changes, Kingsland contested and lost the election in the new constituency of Shropshire and Herefordshire. Defeated by only 1,850 votes, amid Euro-controversy that threatened to engulf the Conservatives, he said: “Politics is about team games and not virtuosos and, as long as we remember that, we can win again.”

His removal from the European Parliament did not halt his political career so much as cause a change of direction. He was given a baronetcy and a seat in the House of Lords from which he spoke for the Conservatives.

His new title did gave rise to a problem of appellation. As Sir Christopher Prout the natural choice was Lord Prout, but after prudent advice he concluded that his association with the European Parliament might mean that he became known as Lord Prout of Brussels, which was uncomfortably close to Lord Brussels Prout. As a result, Lord Kingsland of the county of Shropshire was settled upon.

He made his maiden speech on EU fraud and served for a year as chairman of Sub Committee F of the European Communities Select Committee, before being appointed Shadow Lord Chancellor in 1997.

Kingsland was a committed spokesman for the creation of fair law. In September 2000 he wrote an article for The Times on what he deemed to be the flawed Human Rights Act arguing that it put British judges “in danger of being perceived as part of the political process”. Kingsland was a skilled orator with a keen sense of timing and drama. Baroness Williams of Crosby, one of the founders of the SDP, said that he was “the only member of the opposition who when I see on the monitor, I go into the chamber to listen to”. With modesty and skill he built cross-party consensus. He won acclaim in 2006 when being awarded the Peer of the Year award in 2006 by House Magazine.

He served as vice-chairman of Justice, the all-party group set up to promote the rule of law and to assist the fair administration of legal process. Kingsland, in the words of Roger Smith, the Justice director, was “one of those rare people found in small numbers in all parties who can combine being a successful politician with a thoughtful lawyer”.

In the legal sphere Kingsland was lauded by Chambers and Partners, the legal directory, as possessing a “wonderful manner”. The Legal 500 compendium rated him as “One of the most frequently recommended silks”.

He participated in some of the leading cases of the day including acting for the whistleblower, Stanley Adams, against the European Commission in the 1980s and, in the 1990s, in the controversial “veal calves” export case, acting against Coventry airport, which wanted to stop such traffic. He contributed to Vols. 8, 51 and 52 of the 4th edition of Halsbury’s Laws of England and was the author of the Environment Chapter in the Bar Council publications, The Practitioners Handbook in EC Law. In 1996 he became a bencher of the Middle Temple and in 2005 was appointed as a deputy High Court judge. He was knighted in 1990. In 2004 he was appointed chairman of the Jersey Competition Regulatory Authority. He was made an honorary Fellow of The Queen’s College, Oxford, in 2006.

A neat man of quiet, unassuming demeanour, Kingsland held the rank of major in the Territorial Army and enjoyed gardening in his spare time. It was a source of particular personal pride that after being elected as Master of the Garden at the Middle Temple in 1999 the garden won two awards from the Metropolitan Public Garden Association. He also served as president of the Shropshire and West Midlands Agricultural Society. As he was growing up, activities in the Prout household revolved around the coast and sowed the seeds for a life-long love of the sea. Later he would seize rare moments of holiday to race his shared yacht Defiant and from 2004 until this year was chairman of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, a charity committed to improving the health of marine ecosystems.

He is survived by his wife and four stepchildren.

Lord Kingsland, QC, Shadow Lord Chancellor 1997-2008, was born on January 1, 1942. He died after a long illness on July 12, 2009, aged 67