WHO'S WHO
Lord Lester of Herne Hill QC Peer
Address:
House of Lords
London
SW1A 0PW
Email: lestera@parliament.uk
BIOGRAPHY
Anthony Lester was born in 1936 and brought up in north London. He was created a Life Peer in 1993. He was called to the Bar by Lincoln’s Inn in 1964 and became a QC in 1975. He sat as a Recorder at the Crown Court and a Deputy High Court Judge before becoming a Liberal Democrat Peer.
Between 1974 and 1976, he was Special Adviser to Roy Jenkins, when he had special responsibility for developing policy on race relations, sex discrimination and human rights. He campaigned for thirty years to make the European Human Rights Convention directly enforceable in British courts and introduced two Private Members’ Bills on the subject which became models for the Human Rights Act 1998. Further Private Members’ Bills were introduced by Anthony, seeking to strengthen Parliamentary scrutiny of the treaty-making powers of Government; to give the public direct rights of access to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration (the Ombudsman); to give legal protection and recognition to unmarried couples (both same sex and opposite sex); and to modernise anti-discrimination legislation in a single Equality Bill.
Anthony was a founder member of the Social Democratic Party, and is honorary President of the Liberal Democrat Lawyers Association. He has written many books and articles on human rights and constitutional law, and serves on Parliamentary Committees on human rights and on European Union Law.
In 1997, he received the LIBERTY Human Rights Lawyer of the Year Award, and has received honorary degrees from the Open University, and the universities of Durham, Ulster, the South Bank and University College London. He is President of INTERIGHTS (the International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights) and former Co-Chair of the European Roma Rights Center. He has close connections with several British NGOs, including JUSTICE, and the British Institute of Human Rights.
Anthony is married to Katya (who is a Special Immigration and Asylum Adjudicator) and they have a son – Gideon – who is Associate Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a daughter – Maya – who is a practising member of the English Bar.
