The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the lower house, the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. One of the oldest institutions in the world, its origins lie in the early 11th century and the emergence of bicameralism in the 13th century.
The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) is the office or official charged with the prosecution of criminal offences in several criminal jurisdictions around the world. The title is used mainly in jurisdictions that are or have been members of the Commonwealth of Nations.
Valerie Ann Amos, Baroness Amos, is a British Labour Party politician and diplomat who served as the eighth UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. Before her appointment to the UN, she served as British High Commissioner to Australia. She was created a life peer in 1997, serving as Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council from 2003 to 2007.
The Commonwealth secretary-general, formally the secretary-general of the Commonwealth of Nations, is the head of the Commonwealth Secretariat, the central body which has served the Commonwealth of Nations since its establishment in 1965, and responsible for representing the Commonwealth publicly. The Commonwealth secretary-general should not be confused with the head of the Commonwealth.
Dame Vera Baird is a British barrister and politician who has held roles as a government minister, police and crime commissioner, and Victims' Commissioner for England and Wales.
Eleanor Fulton Laing, Baroness Laing of Elderslie,, is a British Conservative Party politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Epping Forest from 1997 to 2024. She served in the shadow cabinets of Michael Howard and David Cameron. From 2013 to 2024, Laing was a Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons and was the first female Chairman of Ways and Means from 2020 to 2024. She had one of the longest tenures in the speaker's chair. She became a member of the House of Lords in 2024.
Vivien Helen Stern, Baroness Stern is a crossbench member of the House of Lords.
His Majesty's Advocate General for Scotland is one of the Law Officers of the Crown, whose duty it is to advise the Crown and His Majesty's Government on Scots law. The Office of the Advocate General for Scotland is a ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. The position is currently occupied by Catherine Smith KC.
The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom is the final court of appeal in the United Kingdom for all civil cases, and for criminal cases originating in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. As the United Kingdom's highest appellate court for these matters, it hears cases of the greatest public or constitutional importance affecting the whole population.
Lindsay Patricia Northover, Baroness Northover, is a British academic, Liberal Democrat politician, member of the House of Lords, and former junior government minister.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is a ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is headed by the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor. Its stated priorities are to reduce re-offending and protect the public, to provide access to justice, to increase confidence in the justice system, and to uphold people's civil liberties. The Secretary of State is the minister responsible to Parliament for the judiciary, the court system, prisons, and probation in England and Wales, with some additional UK-wide responsibilities, e.g., the UK Supreme Court and judicial appointments by the Crown. The department is also responsible for areas of constitutional policy not transferred in 2010 to the Deputy Prime Minister, human rights law, and information rights law across the UK.
Susan Mary Kiefel is an Australian lawyer and barrister who was the 13th Chief Justice of Australia from 2017 to 2023. She concurrently served on the High Court of Australia from 2007 to 2023, previously being a judge of both the Supreme Court of Queensland and the Federal Court of Australia. Kiefel is the first woman to serve in the position of Chief Justice.
Betty Nah-Akuyea Mould-Iddrisu is a Ghanaian lawyer and politician. A member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), she was Minister for Education in Ghana from 2011 to 2012, after serving as Attorney General and Minister for Justice of Ghana from 2009 to 2011. She was the first woman to lead the Attorney General's Office in Ghana. Prior to politics, she had been the Head of Legal and Constitutional Affairs at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London.
The representation of women in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom has been an issue in the politics of the United Kingdom at numerous points in the 20th and 21st centuries. Originally debate centred on whether women should be allowed to vote and stand for election as Members of Parliament. The Parliament Act 1918 gave women over 21 the right to stand for election as a Member of Parliament. The United Kingdom has had three female Prime Ministers: Margaret Thatcher (1979–1990), Theresa May (2016–2019), and Liz Truss (2022). The publication of the book Women in the House by Elizabeth Vallance in 1979 highlighted the under-representation of women in Parliament. In more modern times concerns about the under-representation of women led the Labour Party to introduce and, decades later, abandon all-women short lists, something which was later held to breach discrimination laws.
Ed Miliband became Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition upon being elected to the former post on 25 September 2010. The election was triggered by Gordon Brown's resignation following the party's fall from power at the 2010 general election, which yielded a Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition. Miliband appointed his first Shadow Cabinet in October 2010, following the Labour Party Shadow Cabinet elections. These elections were the last such elections before they were abolished in 2011.
The majority of the countries of the Commonwealth of Nations, formerly known as the British Commonwealth, still criminalise sexual acts between consenting adults of the same sex and other forms of sexual orientation, gender identity and expression. Homosexual activity remains a criminal offence in 29 of the 56 sovereign states of the Commonwealth; and legal in only 26.
Doreen Delceita Lawrence, Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon,, is a British Jamaican campaigner and the mother of Stephen Lawrence, a black British teenager who was murdered in a racist attack in South East London in 1993. She promoted reforms of the police service and founded the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust. Lawrence was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to community relations in 2003, and was created a life peer in 2013.
The 2015 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, also known as CHOGM 2015 was the 24th Meeting of the Heads of Government of the Commonwealth of Nations. It was held in Malta from 27 to 29 November. Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena handed the position of Commonwealth Chair-in-Office to Maltese prime minister Joseph Muscat at the meeting.
Prior to the 20th Century, there were few women in law in the United Kingdom. Prior to the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919, women were not permitted to practice law in the United Kingdom. By 1931 there were around 100 female solicitors. The first female-only law partnership was founded in 1933. In 2010, a report by The Lawyer found that 22 percent of partners at the UK's top 100 firms were women; a follow-up report in 2015 found that figure had not changed. Since 2014, a number of large corporate firms of solicitors have set gender diversity targets to increase the percentage of women within their partnerships. By 2019, 51% of British solicitors were women.
