Nicholas Lyell, Baron Lyell of Markyate

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Nicholas Walter Lyell, Baron Lyell of Markyate QC PC (born December 6, 1938 in London - † August 30, 2010 ) was a British lawyer , politician ( Conservative Party ) and life peer .

life and career

education and profession

Lyell was born to Sir Maurice Lyell, a high court judge , and his wife, Veronica Luard, a visual artist, sculptor, and draftsman . His mother came from a family that had produced artists in the sixth generation. His grandfather, the painter and draftsman Lowes Dalbiac Luard, was a contemporary of Augustus John and Walter Sickert . Lyell had another sister, Prue Lyell. His mother died when he was eleven years old.

He attended Stowe School, a private school in Stowe in the county of Buckinghamshire . After his military service , he at the Royal Artillery ableistete, studied from 1959 Lyell initially Modern History at Christ Church College of Oxford University , where he a member of the Bullingdon Club was. However, he then switched subjects, opted for law and became a lawyer . He first completed a traineeship at the shipbuilding company Walter Runciman and Co, the family business of his stepmother Lady Kitty Farrar, the younger daughter of Walter Runciman, 1st Viscount Runciman of Doxford , who was married to his father's second marriage. In 1965 he was admitted to the Inner Temple bar. He spent the last part of his legal traineeship ( pupilage ) before completing his training as a barrister with the British judge and specialist in international business law Gordon Slynn .

Lyell subsequently specialized in commercial law , business law and public law . In 1973 he represented a high-profile case of breach of duty and abuse of office in an old people's and nursing home before the General Medical Council (GMC), the British medical association. In 1977 he defended a company that had made a bikini that became see-through in water. In 1980 he became crown attorney , in 1985 he was appointed recorder (i.e. barrister who works part-time as a judge), and in 1986 he was appointed bencher (presiding judge).

Lyell owned a law firm in London, where he returned after the end of his political career in 1997 and worked as a lawyer.

Political career

1974 Lyell stood in the general election for the Conservative Party as a candidate for the constituency of Lambeth Central in the London Borough of Lambeth . From 1979 to 1983 he was a Member of Parliament ( Member of Parliament ) for the constituency of Hemel Hempstead from 1983 to 1997, the constituency of Mid Bedfordshire and from 1997 to 2001 for the constituency of North East Bedfordshire . In 2001 he did not stand for re-election.

Politically, Lyell was a largely inconspicuous backbencher . However, he went public with a bill that stipulated that garden tools could also be sold on Sundays . He also advocated house arrest as a punitive measure against juvenile offenders and against reintroduction of the death penalty by hanging .

From 1979 to 1986 he was Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) under Sir Michael Havers in his function as Attorney General . Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher appointed him on 10 September 1986 Minister of State for Health and Social Security ( Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security ); he held the office until June 1987. On June 13, 1987, he was appointed Solicitor General (Attorney General) and held the office until April 1992. From April 1992 to May 1997 he was himself Attorney General for England , Wales and Northern Ireland under Prime Minister John Major . After the Conservative Party's defeat in the British general election in 1997 , he accepted William Hague's offer and held the post of Shadow Attorney General from 1997 to 1999.

Working in public

In his capacity as Solicitor General and Attorney General, Lyell advised Margaret Thatcher and John Major on legal issues in the political and legal area of ​​tension. He has served as legal counsel, among others, Thatcher's reforms of the right of trade unions ( Reform of Trade Union Law involved) and mediated perform at Thatcher's clashes between the British Bar Association and the Government to the termination of the exclusive right of barristers, in the High Court.

During his tenure, Lyell was one of those involved in the so-called Arms-to-Iraq affair. In the period after the First Gulf War , there was a public interest in clarifying the extent to which British commercial enterprises had also supplied weapons to Iraq . An indictment was brought against the British machine tool manufacturer Matrix Churchill , who defended himself by arguing that the British government had known about the exports . It turned out that Lyell had asked a total of four ministers, including Secretary of Commerce Alan Clark and Secretary of Defense Michael Heseltine , the President of the Board of Trade , to declare documents and information as secret ( Public Interest Immunity Certificate ) for which this is generally not the norm was to remove this from the defense. Lyell had justified this on national security grounds. A 1992 judicial investigation, the so-called Scott Report , chaired by the judge and later Lord of Appeal in Ordinary , Richard Scott , found Lyell's responsibility, but held it to the credit that he had acted in good faith. The results of the investigation compromised Lyell, who then offered his resignation; However, Prime Minister John Major did not dismiss him. A vote in the House of Commons in 1996 after the publication of the Scott Report with the aim of removing Lyell from office failed with a narrow majority of 320-319 votes.

Shortly after John Major took office, Lyell reached an out-of-court settlement after underground magazine Scallywag and weekly The New Statesman published reports that Major was having an affair with a caterer who had been hired on official occasions in Downing Street . Lyell also advised Major on the official announcement of the split between Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer .

After various Member States of the European Union an early 1990s import ban on British beef because of BSE had adopted -Tierseuche, Lyell said that British government plans to adopt in return import bans on products from other Member States against the principle of the free movement of goods contrary and thus were illegal. His legal interpretation led to resentment among his party friends. In 1993 he supported the Major government in the controversy over the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty . Lyell said - referring to that of the Labor Party introduced amendment to the Maastricht Treaty, which should include a commitment to the set in the Maastricht Treaty on European social policy - that the Major government the Maastricht Treaty with regard to the royal prerogative , if necessary even without could sign the chapter on European social policy. He also pointed out to Major that, in accordance with the direct applicability of European law , the members of the Major's cabinet could be held personally responsible for failure to comply with European regulations limiting the maximum weekly working time to 48 hours.

In the early 1990s, Lyell was also involved in the affair of the temporarily fugitive Turkish Cypriot businessman Asil Nadir , who had been charged in Great Britain with, among other things, fraud and bribery. Lyell briefed John Major on the personal contacts of then Minister of State for Northern Ireland, Michael Mates , with Nadir, which eventually led to the dismissal of Mates. Lyell also tried several times in court to prevent the fugitive spy George Blake , who now lives in Moscow , from receiving royalties for the publication of his autobiography No Other Choice . Lyell also allowed the then 84-year-old Szymon Serafinowicz , a former police chief from Belarus and grandfather of British comedian Peter Serafinowicz , to be charged as a war criminal under the War Crimes Act 1991.

Membership in the House of Lords

On June 27, 2005, he was named Life Peer as Baron Lyell of Markyate , of Markyate in the County of Hertfordshire . He was officially installed on July 5, 2005. He gave his inaugural address on July 7, 2005. The last time he spoke up was on June 2, 2010 in the House of Lords. He was last present for a vote on July 6, 2010.

Further offices and honors

In 1987 he was raised to a Knight Bachelor degree . In 1990 he became a member of the Privy Council .

He was Vice-President ( Vice-Chairman ) of the British Field Sports Society (1983-1986). He was chairman of the Society of Conservative Lawyers ( Executive Chair 1985–86, 1997–2004; Chair 2004–2010). He was also President ( Chairman ) of the Board of Governors of the Stowe School (2001-2007). He was until October 2007, Chairman ( Chairman ) of St Albans Cathedral Trust. He was a Member of the Court of the University of Hertfordshire and the University of Luton , now the University of Bedfordshire .

He has also been Chairman of the Federation of British Artists charity since July 2007 .

Private

Lyell had learned a love for drawing and sketching people from his grandfather. Lyell made ink and pen drawings in particular . During breaks in meetings, Lyell often portrayed members of parliament and colleagues. In 1996 an exhibition of his work took place in the Mall Galleries in London. The fact that Lyell had often used the back of some of the confidential documents for his sketches caused a stir.

Lyell was married to Susanna Mary Fletcher since September 1967. They had four children, two sons and two daughters. His wife ran painting courses and wine seminars in France , where Lyell owned a country house in Burgundy between Chablis and Beaune .

Lyell died of cancer that he was diagnosed with in 1998. Lyell had had to undergo various chemotherapies several times in recent years .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Tory MP to step down BBC News ; March 24, 2000
  2. ↑ Defeat 'need not delay treaty' The Independent ; February 14, 1993
  3. ↑ BBC star's grandfather faced Nazi was crimes trial Daily Mail ; October 21, 2007
  4. ^ Full list of new life peers, BBC News ; May 13, 2005
  5. ↑ House of Lords. Minutes of Proceedings ( Memento of the original dated September 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Minutes of the meeting of July 5, 2005 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk
  6. ^ Nicholas Walter Lyell, Baron Lyell of Markyate on thepeerage.com , accessed August 13, 2015.
  7. ↑ LYELL OF MARKYATE, Lord Register of Lords' Interests
  8. ^ Former law chief Lord Lyell dies of cancer at 71 Daily Mail ; August 31, 2010
personal data
SURNAME Lyell, Nicholas, Baron Lyell of Markyate
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lyell, Nicholas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British lawyer, politician, Member of the House of Commons and Life Peer
DATE OF BIRTH December 6, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH August 30, 2010