The former Labour attorney general John Morris, who has died aged 91 after a short illness, clocked up an extraordinary series of records during 64 years in the Commons and Lords. At the time of his death he was the longest-serving member of the privy council, to which he was appointed in 1970, and had sat in cabinet under three prime ministers, the last of whom, Tony Blair, was six years old when Morris was first elected as MP for Aberavon, south Wales, in 1959.
In one of his earliest posts, as a junior transport minister, he helped pilot the 1967 Road Safety Act, introducing the breathalyser, through the Commons under the aegis of the then transport secretary, Barbara Castle. He was secretary of state for Wales for the entirety of the 1974-79 Labour governments of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, and after the ensuing years in opposition was appointed by Blair in 1997 as the senior law officer in his new Labour government.
