Dianne Hayter


Dianne Hayter, Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town is a British politician and Labour Co-operative member of the House of Lords. She served as a member of the Labour Party National Executive Committee from 1998 to 2010, representing the Socialist Societies. She was Chair of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2008.
She has also held a number of executive and non-executive roles.
In the Lords, she has served as a Whip and as Shadow spokesperson for several departments.
She is deputy leader of Labour in the Lords.

Early life

She is the daughter of Flt Lt Alec Bristow Hayter, and Nancy Evans. Educated at Trevelyan College, Durham University, where she studied Social and Public Administration, she gained a doctorate at London University in 2004.

Labour Party

Hayter was the General Secretary of the Fabian Society between 1976 and 1982 and Chief Executive of the European Parliamentary Labour Party during 1990 to 1996.
She sat on Labour's National Executive Committee from 1998 to 2010 and chaired it in 2007–08.
The at the People's History Museum in Manchester holds the personal papers of Dianne Hayter in their collection, spanning from the late 1970s to 2010.

Other roles

From 1984 to 1990, she was a director of Alcohol Concern.
From 1996 to 1999, she was Director of Corporate Affairs for the Wellcome Trust.
Hayter is a board member of a number of organisations, including the Financial Reporting Council's Board of Actuarial Standards, the Determinations Panel of The Pensions Regulator, the Surveying Ombudsman Service, and the Insolvency Practices Council. She is chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel and was formerly vice chairman of the Financial Services Authority Consumer Panel and chair of the Consumer Panel of the Bar Standards Board.
She was a JP from 1976 to 1990.

House of Lords

On 22 June 2010, she was created a life peer as Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town, of Kentish Town in the London Borough of Camden, and was introduced in the House of Lords the same day.
She was a Whip from October 2011 to September 2015. She has been Shadow Spokesperson for a number of departments.
She was elected Deputy leader of Labour in the Lords in June 2017.
She is a member of Labour Friends of Israel.
In July 2019, she was sacked as Shadow Brexit Minister for making what Labour called "deeply offensive" remarks at a Labour First group meeting, asserting that the party's leadership was not open to external views and comparing them to being "in a bunker" like the "last days of Hitler".

Personal life

Dianne Hayter lives in Kentish Town, London with her husband, Professor David Caplin, whom she married in 1994.

Publications

Hayter has written Fabian Tract no. 451—The Labour Party: Crisis and Prospects, Fightback—Labour's traditional right in the 1970s and 1980s, and Men Who Made Labour—Celebrating the Centenary of the Parliamentary Labour Party .