Charles Falconer, Baron Falconer of Thoroton

Charles Falconer, Baron Falconer of Thoroton (May 2009)

Charles Leslie Falconer, Baron Falconer of Thoroton QC (born November 19, 1951 in Edinburgh ) is a British lawyer and Labor Party politician who was Lord Chancellor from 2003 to 2007 .

Life

After schooling studied Falconer first at Trinity College in Glenalmond and following Law at Queens' College of the University of Cambridge . After graduating, he was admitted to the Inner Temple Bar Association in 1974 . He was appointed Crown Attorney in 1991 and elected Head of the Inner Temple Bar Association in 1997.

After he was raised to the nobility in 1997 as a Life Peer with the title Baron Falconer of Thoroton , of Thoroton in the County of Nottinghamshire, he became a member of the House of Lords .

When his fellow student Tony Blair became Prime Minister after the general election in May 1997 , the latter appointed him Solicitor General . After a government reshuffle , he became Minister of State for the Cabinet Office and the Coordination of Cabinet Policy in July 1998, and as such was responsible for the Millennium Dome project, among other things . In 2001 he became Minister of State in the Ministry of Transport, Local Administration and the Regions, where he was the Minister responsible for Housing, Planning and Regeneration until 2002, before becoming Minister of State in the Ministry of the Interior between 2002 and 2003 , where he was responsible for criminal law, convictions and legal reform.

In 2003 Prime Minister Blair appointed him to succeed Derry Irvine, Baron Irvine of Lairg as Lord Chancellor and Minister of Justice in his second cabinet. The swearing-in took place on June 18, 2003. In this role, which he held until he was replaced by Jack Straw in 2007, he was also the government's spokesman for constitutional affairs and justice.

In the House of Lords, Baron Falconer, who is also Vice-President of the UK Section of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Society , has been both spokesman for the opposition group on Justice and Constitutional Affairs and chairman of the Euthanasia Committee since 2010 .

From September 2015 to June 2016, Lord Falconer was the Shadow Lord Chancellor and Shadow Minister of Justice in Jeremy Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet . On June 26, 2016, Lord Falconer resigned.

Web links

• Entry on the homepage of the British Parliament
• The Guardian Profile: Charles Falconer. The Domesday bloke . In: The Guardian, December 11, 1999

Individual evidence

1. ^ Mammon: Blair's Mr Fixit on home front . In: The Guardian, May 5, 2003
2. ↑ Lord Falconer refuses to look the part . In: The Guardian, June 19, 2003
3. ↑ Peter Walker: Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet in full , The Guardian , September 14, 2015, accessed September 14, 2015.
4. ^ Rajeev Syal, Frances Perraudin: Shadow cabinet resignations: who has gone and who is staying. The Guardian , June 26, 2016, accessed June 26, 2016 .