Sally Hamwee, Baroness Hamwee


Sally Rachel Hamwee, Baroness Hamwee is a Liberal Democrat politician and their Lead Home Affairs Spokesperson in the House of Lords. She is a Life Peer and former chair of the London Assembly.

Biography

Hamwee was educated at the Manchester High School for Girls, and Girton College, Cambridge where she studied law. She was a councillor in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames from 1978 to 1998 and was made a life peer on 6 June 1991 as Baroness Hamwee, of Richmond upon Thames in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames.
When the London Assembly was established in 2000, a written agreement with the Labour Party saw Sally Hamwee and Trevor Phillips agreeing to share responsibility for chairing the Assembly in its first term. Trevor Phillips took the Chair in 2000, passing it over to Hamwee in May 2001. Phillips chaired the Assembly from May 2002 to September 2002, but when Trevor Phillips stood down from the Assembly to take up chairmanship of the Commission for Racial Equality, Hamwee stepped in and chaired the Assembly until the June 2004 GLA elections.
The results of those elections saw the Conservative Party and Liberal Democrats enter into a similar agreement as existed between Labour and Lib Dems previously. This agreement resulted in Sally Hamwee chairing the London Assembly between May 2005 and May 2006, and for the final year of this term from May 2007. As part of the agreement when not chairing the Assembly she chaired the Business Management and Appointments Committee. She stood down from the London Assembly in May 2008. She was spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats in the Lords for Regional and Local Government until November 2009 when she became spokesperson on Home Affairs. Hamwee is a vice president of equal rights charity Parity.