Former British Foreign Secretary Cook dies after collapse

Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook has died in hospital after collapsing while hillwalking in Scotland.

Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook has died in hospital after collapsing while hillwalking in Scotland.

Mr Cook (59) was with his wife Gaynor on Ben Stack in Sutherland when he took ill at 2.23pm, Northern Constabulary said.

The Labour MP, who lived in Edinburgh, was near the summit of the 2,365ft mountain.

He was airlifted by a Coastguard helicopter to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness, where he died.

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Mr Cook was a keen hill-walker, and regularly spends his summer holidays with close family and friends enjoying the dramatic mountain scenery of Highland Scotland, rather than going abroad.

A leading figure in the Labour Party for decades, Mr Cook was put in the key job of Foreign Secretary when the party won power in 1997. He was demoted to the post of Leader of the Commons following Labour's second election victory in 2001 and resigned from the Cabinet in protest at the Iraq War in 2003.

Mr Cook had apparently collapsed with a suspected heart attack on the mountainside while out walking during his summer holidays.

He was also reported to have seriously injured himself in a fall after his collapse. The father-of-two grown up sons was on the mountain for nearly half an hour before rescue services reached him.

Then, guided by medical experts via telephone, they battled to revive him using cardio pulmonary resuscitation equipment, before he was airlifted by helicopter to hospital in Inverness.

Mr Cook arrived at hospital at 4pm - some 90 minutes after his collapse and was declared dead five minutes later, said a spokesman for NHS Highland. But it was more than three hours later before police confirmed his death.