This is news hot off the press. The  Liberal Democrat group in the House of Lords have elected a new representative to the party’s Federal Executive. Given that the committee is meeting this evening, in about 7 minutes’ time, that’s pretty fortuitous.

Imagine the drum roll….

It is…..

Baroness Lindsay Northover, our former International Development Minister.

From her biography on the Liberal Democrat website:

Lindsay Northover was educated at Brighton & Hove High School and St. Anne’s College, Oxford University, where she received an MA in Modern History.  She went on to study at Bryn Mawr College and the University of Pennsylvania, where she gained an MA and PhD.   She was a Research Fellow at University College London, St. Mark’s Hospital, and St. Thomas’s Hospital Medical School, and later became a Lecturer at University College London and the Wellcome Institute.

Lindsay has stood in three General Elections, contesting Welwyn Hatfield in the 1983 and 1987 general elections (for the SDP), and Basildon in the 1997 general election. She was a member of the committee which negotiated the Liberal/SDP merger in 1987.

She was Chair of Women Liberal Democrats, 1992-1995, and has been President of Liberal Democrat Women since 2014.

She joined the House of Lords, becoming a Life Peer, in May 2000. Initially she served as health spokesperson between 2000 and 2002, before joining the frontbench team as Spokesperson on International Development.

During her time in the Lords she has been a member of various Select Committees including those on Embryonic Stem Cell Research and the European Union (Sub-Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and International Development and the Sub-Committee on Economic and Financial Affairs).

She held a number of Coalition Government Spokesperson roles over the course of the Government including Spokesperson for the Government Equalities Office (Women and Equalities) and International Development; and Whip and Spokesperson for Culture, Media and Sport; Education; Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Health; Justice; the Law Officers; and Wales.

In 2014 she became Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development. In this role she called for sustained commitment to development, with a particular focus on empowering women and girls, ensuring that they have access to education, healthcare, and rights, including bringing to an end early and forced marriage, and female genital mutilation (FGM). She was appointed to the Privy Council in March 2015.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social