Transparency data

New Year Honours List 2022: High Awards (HTML)

Published 31 December 2021

Companion Of Honour (CH)

Frank Ernest Field, The Right Honourable Lord Field Of Birkenhead DL

Lord Field has dedicated himself to public service for the past 57 years. He was a member of Hounslow Borough Council from 1964-68 and contested Buckinghamshire South as the Labour candidate at the General Election in 1966. He was Director of the Child Poverty Action Group from 1969-79, having published many reports on low pay, poverty and social issues since 1971. He was also Director of the Low Pay Unit from 1974-80. He was MP for Birkenhead from 1979-2019. He was Minister of State for the Department of Social Security from 1997-98 and a member of the Public Accounts Committee from 2002-05. In 2010 (at the request of a Conservative Prime Minister) he led an Independent Review on Poverty and Life Chances and, in 2014, chaired the Joint Committee on the Draft Modern Slavery Bill in 2014. From 2015-19 he served on various other Committees. For 12 years he chaired the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England and is now a trustee. Prior to this, for 10 years he chaired the Churches Conservation Trust. In 2007, he co-founded the charity Cool Earth, whose aim is to protect rainforests.

Sir Paul Maxime Nurse FRS

Sir Paul Nurse has made major and sustained contributions to science, society and medicine in the UK and internationally, as a geneticist and cell biologist. He has received numerous prestigious awards, including The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He has served as President of the Royal Society, modernising the institution and making it more outward facing. Through his efforts, Cancer Research UK was created by merging the Cancer Research Campaign and the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. He went on to create the Francis Crick Institute by bringing together two research institutes, three funders and three universities under his leadership. He served for 15 years on the Council of Science and Technology, advising the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

Knight Commander Of The Order Of The Bath (KCB)

Sir Patrick John Thompson Vallance

Sir Patrick Vallance has provided exceptional leadership and drive as Government Chief Scientific Adviser to help improve the lives of the nation’s citizens and tackle the Covid-19 pandemic. As GCSA he has led the work of scientists tirelessly throughout the Covid-19 response. He set clear expectations and parameters around the activities of SAGE from the outset. This enabled them to respond rapidly, to draw upon the independent views of a large body of scientists and to shape these views into consensus statements to support decision making during Covid-19. This is no mean feat considering the range of views, skills, and experience across disciplines required to inform the response. The scientists knew that he would carefully read and properly understand their work before he presented it with clarity and integrity at the heart of government. He also formed the Vaccines Task Force.

Professor Christopher John Macrae Whitty CB

Chris Whitty is the Chief Medical Officer for England and Chief Medical Adviser to the UK Government. As such, he represents the UK on the Executive Board of the World Health Organisation. He is a practising NHS Consultant Physician at University College London Hospital and an epidemiologist who has undertaken research and worked as a doctor in Africa and Asia as well as the UK. He is a Professor of Physic at Gresham College and was previously a Professor of Public and International Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He was Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA) for the Department of Health and Social Care from 2016-21 and the Government’s Interim Chief Scientific Adviser from 2017-18 (including during the Novichok poisonings). Before that he was CSA at the Department for International Development, where he led on the UK’s technical response to the West African Ebola outbreak.

Dame Commander Of The Order Of The British Empire (DBE)

Dr Vivienne Cox CBE

As an Independent Non-Executive Director at Glaxo-Smith Kline (GSK), Vivienne Cox has helped test, inform and shape the environmental, social and governance agenda, maximising the organisation’s environmental and societal impact. Her outreach to GSK’s employees and her discussion of the CEO’s ambition to improve diversity and inclusion helped the publication of targets for female and ethnically diverse representation in senior roles and also greater transparency around the ethnic representation of GSK’s workforce. She is also Chair of the Board of the Rosalind Franklin Institute - which has already made some very significant scientific breakthroughs, including the development of potential therapeutics against COVID-19, the shift in chemistry from test tube to cell and construction of first of their kind instruments that will lead to the new field of atomic level pathology. She is also patron of the St Francis Hospice in Berkhamsted.

Dr Jennifer Margaret Harries OBE

Jenny Harries has devised, developed and implemented the clinical shielding policy to protect the clinically vulnerable and has worked through the Covid-19 pandemic to identify the group of those clinically extremely vulnerable. She has continued this work with the development of a national research collaboration to deliver a risk stratification tool, QCovid, led by Oxford University. She played a leading role in the UK’s response to Ebola in West Africa, overseeing the introduction of the UK’s Returning Workers Programme and most high-profile airport screening programme. She also led the successful response to the detection of Monkey Pox in the UK, as well as work on MERS and the Zika virus. Her incident response work extends to the National Breast Screening programme, the safe management of Hepatitis A during a vaccine shortage, and the public health professional response to the Novichok attack.

Sylvia Lloyd Heal

Sylvia Heal has been a life-long Labour Party member and political activist. She was a member of the Young Socialists National Committee for four years from 1960 and was appointed as a Justice of the Peace in 1970. She worked as a medical records clerk at the Chester Royal Infirmary for six years from 1957. In 1968 she was appointed as a social worker for two years. She returned to work in 1980 with the Department of Employment as a social worker within an employment rehabilitation centre. During her parliamentary interregnum she worked as a young carers officer with Carers UK from 1992 to 1997.

Laura Rebecca Kenny CBE

At the Tokyo Olympics, Laura Kenny became the first British woman to win three Olympic gold medals at three consecutive games. When winning gold at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in the first ever Women’s Madison event (alongside Katie Archibald) and a silver medal in the Women’s Team Pursuit, Laura became the most decorated and successful female in British Olympic history with a haul of 5 gold medals and 1 silver medal. She joined a club previously consisting solely of Sir Chris Hoy, Sir Steve Redgrave, Sir Bradley Wiggins and Jason Kenny as Britons with at least 5 Olympic titles. She also became the most successful female cyclist in Olympic history. Her Tokyo medals followed the two gold medals she won at the Rio 2016 Olympics in the Women’s Team Pursuit and Women’s Omnium as well as the two gold medals she claimed at London 2012, also in the Women’s Team Pursuit and the Women’s Omnium.

Sara Khan

Sara Khan has dedicated her personal and professional life to challenging extremism in Britain. Championing human rights and defending democratic values, she has shown exceptional integrity and courage despite threats to her life. She was recently made the Prime Minister’s Independent Adviser on Social Cohesion and Resilience to work against the impact of extremism in communities. She has spent the last 15 years leading a nationwide dialogue to build understanding of extremism in all its forms, driving forward change from within communities and institutions at the highest levels of policymaking. In 2018 she became the first Lead Commissioner for Countering Extremism, building an innovative commission that engages widely across the UK and providing HMG with independent advice and cutting-edge policy solutions.

Emily Lawson

As Senior Responsible Officer for the vaccine deployment programme, Emily Lawson created and led the successful and effective NHS operation delivering the first Covid vaccination outside a clinical trial in the world, ensuring millions of vaccines into people’s arms each week and helping save over 100,000 lives and countless hospitalisations. Her decisive action and exceptional leadership instilled a relentless focus nationally, regionally and locally on delivering the vaccine to those most at risk as soon as practically possible, as well as ensuring equal access for all communities. She was also responsible for the transformation of a high profile and complex outsourcing contract worth £330m over seven years to provide primary care support services, overseeing significant improvements in performance and the reduction of service, reputational and financial risks. She is part of the Steering Committee of the 30% Club, which aims to increase representation of women on UK plc boards, and to research and support greater diversity in the UK and global institutions.

Diane Elizabeth Lees CBE

Diane Lees has led the Imperial War Museum (IWM) throughout the last 12 years, growing a successful multi-site institution into a widely-respected global brand during times of considerable fiscal constraint. She has brought outstanding dedication and leadership to her roles at the IWM and in the UK museums sector. She began her career as an historic buildings researcher and then moved into exhibitions, education, and interpretation where she worked on some of the most challenging and exciting projects in the country, including the recovery and display of the Mary Rose flagship in Portsmouth Harbour and the redisplay of the Nelson Galleries at the Royal Naval Museum. She project managed the creation of the UK standard for the recording of information about museum collections and was responsible for the creation of the multi-award-winning Galleries of Justice in Nottingham.

Joanna Lumley OBE

Joanna Lumley, actress, is best known for her rôle in the British television series Absolutely Fabulous portraying Patsy Stone. Her many television appearances include The New Avengers, Coronation Street and Sapphire & Steel. Documentaries have taken her to the Northern Lights, Kyrgystan, India, Japan, Iran and Mongolia. She has three Baftas and a Bafta Fellowship, awards for Lifetime Achievement from the Golden Rose of Montreux, and Special Recognition by the National Television Awards. Theatre roles on Broadway and the West End include works by Ibsen, Coward, Wilde, Chekhov and Ayckbourn directed by Trevor Nunn, Harold Pinter and Ayckbourn himself. Her films encompass Pink Panthers, James Bond, Dracula, Paddington 2 and Martin Scorsese’s Wolf of Wall Street with Leonardo Di Caprio. She has spoken out as a human rights activist for Survival International, Free Tibet and the Gurkha Justice Campaign. She is an advocate for over 70 charities; she supports human rights organisations, animal welfare groups and the casualties of warfare.

Professor Julie Elspeth Lydon OBE

Julie Lydon has been one of the prime movers in Welsh Higher Education over the past decade or more. She has been the pre-eminent leader in Welsh Higher Education and Chair of UnisWales. She has been a Vice President of Universities UK and former Deputy Chair of Universities Alliance, with over 11 years as Vice-Chancellor and 4 years as Deputy Vice-Chancellor. As Deputy Vice Chancellor she instigated and led the ground-breaking Higher Education/Further Education partnership to widen participation in the Heads of the Valleys, UHOVI. She has led the University with research and business-related engagements which include important developments in cyber security, battery technology and hydrogen research and the award, 3 years in a row, of Cyber University of the Year (2019, 2020 and 2021).

Dr June Munro Raine CBE

June Raine has had a life-long career in medicines regulation. She was appointed as interim Chief Executive of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in September 2019. Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, the MHRA has acted flexibly and at speed whilst continuing to meet the highest standards of safety and efficacy in its regulatory decisions. Decisions taken by her ensured that MHRA’s laboratories operated through the pandemic carrying out vital work on the Covid-19 virus. Her direction ensured access to medicines and medical devices for patients suffering from Covid-19. In 2012 she became the founding Chair of the European Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee, strengthening drug safety decision-making. She is held in high regard by other regulators in the International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities and as co-chair of the WHO Advisory Committee on Safety of Medicinal Products.

Vanessa Redgrave CBE

Vanessa Redgrave has, for decades, been one of the UK’s finest actresses and she is still feted worldwide. She has won Evening Standard awards in four separate decades. She has been Oscar-nominated six times; Emmy-nominated five times; and Golden Globe-nominated 13 times. Overall in her career to date she has won 42 awards from 97 nominations. She trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1960s. She is also president of International Artists Against Racism and was a Special Representative for UNICEF UK from 1993-95, since when she has been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. She was awarded a CBE in the Birthday 1967 Honours List. She also received one of the French Government’s highest awards for cultural and artistic achievement, Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts and des Lettres, in 2001.

Professor Sarah Marcella Springman CBE

Sarah Springman is one of the world’s most accomplished academic geotechnical engineers and a pioneer in the study of soft soil mechanics, ground improvement and mass movement of slopes, renowned for research, teaching and academic leadership. She is also an acclaimed international champion triathlete and sports administrator. In 1997 she was appointed Professor at the leading Swiss University, ETH Zurich. There she established a world-leading research group in soil mechanics using bespoke laboratory centrifuges for effective physical modelling of complex soil structures. In this sector, engineering expertise in soil mechanics can play an important role in tackling the effects of climate change. In 2015 she became Rector of ETH Zurich. In 2021 she was appointed Principal of St Hilda’s College, Oxford.

Professor Helen Jayne Stokes-Lampard

Helen Stokes-Lampard was the most inspirational leader of General Practice in a generation. As Chair, she led the largest Medical Royal College (52,000 members). She persuaded policy makers and health professionals of the importance of general practice to the future of the NHS and the need to address the historical imbalance between primary and secondary care investment. Thanks to her leadership, General Practice is now seen as the solution to many of society’s health problems. She spearheaded a national campaign on tackling loneliness, a major health threat affecting over 9 million people in the UK. She worked closely with many agencies including NHSE’s Next Generation GP Programme to inspire hundreds of students (under and postgraduate) at events across the UK; the numbers choosing general practice are now at record levels. She now leads the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges.

Knight Commander Of The Order Of The British Empire (KBE)

Professor Ajay Kumar Kakkar, The Right Honourable The Lord Kakkar

Lord Kakkar has distinguished himself in public and voluntary service through his membership and chairmanship of a range of public and charitable bodies, as well as through his services to the medical field. He was appointed as an independent crossbench peer in 2010 and from 2013-18, he served as Chair of the House of Lords Appointments Commission, taking charge of the recommendation of new crossbench life peers. He was appointed Chair of the Judicial Appointments Commission in 2016, leading a group of 14 other lay and judicial commissioners. An outstanding and valuable advocate for public health and clinical research, he has served on the Science and Technology Select Committee and an ad hoc Committee on the future of the NHS.

Thomas Mclaughlin Mcavoy, The Right Honourable The Lord Mcavoy

Lord McAvoy has had a long and distinguished career in public life, serving first Rutherglen in the House of Commons and then the wider Labour Party movement in the Lords. He entered Parliament as the Member for Glasgow Rutherglen in 1987. He first served as an Opposition Whip from 1990-93; when he stood down at the 2010 General Election, he was the longest-serving Government Whip in the history of Parliament. He joined the House of Lords in 2010 and immediately became part of the Whips’ Office. Having been promoted to Deputy Chief Whip in 2015, he was elected to serve as Opposition Chief Whip in January 2018, finally standing down in May 2021.

Knights Bachelor

Dr Francis Atherton

Frank Atherton has been an exceptional visible and public leader of the Covid-19 response alongside Ministers and his advice has significantly shaped the distinctive approaches taken in Wales to protect the Welsh population. He has, by necessity and with credibility, stepped well beyond the normal boundaries of the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) role in responding to this global event. A public health professional and a former GP, he has been CMO of Wales since 2016. His extensive public health background has never been more important than in acting as the principal adviser to the First Minister and Cabinet on Covid-19 and leading the professional and scientific views that have underpinned Welsh Government policy-making and decisions.

The Rt Honourable John Dominic Battle

John Battle was the Member of Parliament for Leeds West from 1987 until his retirement in 2010. He served as Minister of State in the Department for Trade and Industry from 1997-99 and as Minister of State in the Foreign Office from 1999-2001. He was a campaigning MP, representing his constituents assiduously and fighting for change, most notably in relation to mesothelioma from asbestos poisoning. He has been the Pro Chancellor of Leeds Trinity University since 2017, serves on the Board of Citizens UK and co-chairs Leeds Citizens. Motivated by a commitment to child safety, he led a successful community take-over of a Grade II Llisted swimming pool scheduled to close in 2013, securing its future and ensuring that thousands of children have learnt to swim.

John Boorman CBE

John Boorman left school at 16 and wrote and published many stories. He appeared on BBC Youth programmes at 17. After 2 years of National Service he was employed by ITN, learning film editing, and joined the BBC in Bristol as a producer. There he started as an assistant, but worked later as a director on documentaries. He won the Best Director Award at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival for his biopic of Martin Cahill. He has directed 22 films and received five Academy Award nominations, twice for Best Director (for Deliverance and Hope and Glory). He is also credited with creating the first Academy Award screeners to promote The Emerald Forest. In 2004 he received a Fellowship for Lifetime Achievement from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. He has published 5 books which include works about his life and career.

Jan Petrus Du Plessis

Jan du Plessis was Chair of BT Group from November 2017 to December 2021. He reorientated the company to make fundamental investments that are critical to the future success of the UK economy. That included a £15bn commitment to extend the nation’s fibre infrastructure to 25 million households, together with comparable investment in the 5G mobile network and a major transformation of BT’s customer service, with customer satisfaction scores for Openreach and the BT brand now standing at all time highs. As the chair of a number of FTSE companies over more than 17 years, he has made a wide contribution to business. Through Chair Mentors International and the Mentoring Foundation, he has provided advice and counsel to numerous chairs and CEOs of public companies and to senior female business leaders.

Professor Anthony Charles Wiener Finklestein CBE

Anthony Finkelstein was Chief Scientific Adviser for National Security from December 2015 to June 2021. He is currently the President of City, University of London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He is a Member of Academia Europaea, a Fellow of City & Guilds of London Institute and a Distinguished Fellow of RUSI (the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies). He is a member of the Council of UK Research & Innovation (UKRI). Prior to assuming his current role he held a Chair in Software Systems Engineering at University College London (UCL) and was formerly Dean of UCL Engineering. His scientific work is in the broad area of systems engineering.

The Rt Honourable Robert Goodwill MP

Robert Goodwill is a dedicated public servant, who has been involved on the frontline of politics for the past 30 years. He currently serves as the Member of Parliament of Scarborough and Whitby, a position he has held since 2005 when he regained the seat from Labour. Prior to that he was a Member of the European Parliament for the Yorkshire and the Humber region from 1999-2004 and Deputy Leader of the Conservative Delegation in Brussels. He has demonstrated a commitment to Conservatism in Yorkshire and the North East starting from when he unsuccessfully contested the seat of Redcar at the 1992 General Election. He has served as a Whip and as Minister of State in four Government departments: Transport, Home Office, Education and DEFRA.

Professor Robin Grimes FRS FREng

Robin Grimes has made major contributions to understanding material science and engineering, generating exceptional insight into the properties of materials for energy applications, particularly for nuclear energy. He has provided strategic scientific advice to the government as a Chief Scientific Adviser first in the FCO and latterly in the Ministry of Defence. He played a pivotal role in the UK response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster 2011, serving on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies at that time, and subsequently during other emergencies. His in-depth understanding of the situation during Fukushima, including the plant and materials involved, enabled the Government Chief Scientific Adviser to provide the Prime Minister with clear, unambiguous advice which stood the test of time and was a critical source of reassurance to the Japanese Government and its citizens. He continued to play an active part in building engagement with Japanese scientists, but also in other countries particularly Argentina and India.

David Winton Harding

David Harding has quietly made major strategic endowments, which have enabled individuals to make enormous contributions to research, industry and civil society. These achievements are made possible by the success of his investment and data science company, Winton Group, of which he is founder and Chief Executive Officer. As a distinguished alumnus of St Catherine’s College, Cambridge, he has donated £130m to his College and University to endow Scholarships, fund research into sustainability and promote public statistical literacy. He has also given generously to museums, theatres and community projects, most notably the Science Museum.

Professor John Anthony Hardy FRS

Professor John Hardy is an international figure in the research of neurodegenerative disease and is globally recognised for his contribution to developing breakthrough therapies for dementia. He has collaborated widely and, together with his co-workers, has deposited whole genome association data for Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease, Motor Neurone Disease, Bipolar Disease and controls in an open access format allowing direct interrogation by the scientific community. He created the amyloid cascade hypothesis of Alzheimer’s Disease, this being the major theory of disease leading to the trial therapies Aducanemab and Donanemab, both in final stages of approval. He is Chair of the Molecular Biology of Neurological Disease at the UCL Institute of Neurology and a Member of the UK Dementia Research Institute at UCL and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2009.

Jason Francis Kenny CBE

Winning his 7th Olympic Gold medal at the Tokyo Olympic Games, Jason Kenny became Team GB’s most successful and most decorated Olympian of all time, surpassing Sir Chris Hoy’s total of 6 Olympic Gold medals. In winning his 9th Olympic medal overall, he has also overtaken Sir Bradley Wiggins’ total of 8 Olympic medals. His Tokyo 2020 medals followed the 3 Gold medals he won in Rio 2016 (Men’s Keirin, Men’s Team Sprint and Men’s Sprint), his 2 Gold medals from London 2012 (Men’s Sprint and Men’s Team Sprint) and his Gold and Silver medals from Beijing 2008 (Men’s Team Sprint and Men’s Sprint respectively). He has won 45 medals in total, of which 17 were Gold, at UCI World Championships (9 Medals), UEC European Championships (7 Medals), UCI World Cups (18 Medals), Olympic (9 Medals) and Commonwealth Games (2 Medals).

Ian Livingstone CBE

Ian Livingstone is one of the founding fathers of the UK games industry. He co-founded Games Workshop in 1975, launching Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer in Europe. In 1982, he co-authored The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, the first gamebook in the multi-million selling Fighting Fantasy series. When Chairman of video games publisher Eidos plc, he launched Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in 1996. In 2011, he co-authored the Next Gen review and chaired the Next Gen Skills campaign, working with government to introduce the new Computing curriculum in schools in 2014. With a focus on creativity and computational thinking, the Livingstone Academy, Bournemouth opened in 2021 to enable children to be digital makers as well as digital consumers. He is Chairman Sumo Group plc, Partner at Hiro Capital, Non-executive Director of the National Citizen Service, Non-executive Director Aspirations Academies Trust, Non-executive Director Foundation for Education Development, Non-executive Director Creative UK, Member of Raspberry Pi Foundation and President of the BGI.

Peter Edward Murray CBE

Peter Murray founded Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 1977 and has led its development into a major international centre for sculpture; a cultural beacon for Yorkshire, attracting artists and visitors from all over the world. His commitment to artists and to making art accessible to everyone has continued through the decades and was acknowledged when YSP was named Museum of the Year by the Art Fund in 2014. Collaboration with others has seen YSP become founder members of initiatives such as Yorkshire Sculpture International and the European Land Art Network. An important employer in the region, YSP makes an annual contribution of over £10m to the local economy. A major achievement was reuniting the designed landscape of the Bretton estate, now welcoming 500,000 visitors and 40,000 participants in YSP’s learning programmes each year.

Professor Jonathan Stafford Nguyen-Van-Tam MBE

Jonathan Van-Tam has been a key adviser to the UK Government on pandemic response since 2004. He has led Covid-19 treatment work for the Government. Working with external experts, the Recovery Platform trial was set up, successfully becoming the largest randomised control trial for Covid-19 treatments in the world. He is also the Clinical Adviser to the Vaccines Taskforce. He worked to ensure that the first lockdown was lifted safely. He was central to the Government’s preparedness for a potential H5N1 pandemic and, in the subsequent 2009 swine flu pandemic, he played a key advisory role advising the World Health Organization and sat on the UK SAGE Committee. From 2010-17 he ran the world’s only WHO Collaborating Centre for pandemic influenza. He was critical to the introduction of the adjuvanted flu vaccine for older people in the UK.

Douglas Edwin Oakervee CBE FRENG

Douglas Oakervee has made an outstanding contribution to engineering globally. He played a crucial role for the Government, having been asked by the Prime Minister in 2019 to carry out a review of HS2. He assembled the Oakervee report in 4 months, recommending to the Prime Minister that HS2 should proceed. He was appointed Chair of HS2 Ltd in 2012 where he led the business case and hybrid bill preparation for Phase 1 of the HS2 project and in 2013 deposited the biggest hybrid bill ever, and in an electronic format, a first for Parliament. In 2020 he took on the Presidency of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers, the world’s oldest engineering society. During lockdown he arranged stimulating debates on engineering issues of the day. His role as a special representative in China for the Institute of Civil Engineers cements experience and delivers tangible benefits for Britain’s businesses in China and worldwide. Since 2017 he has been Chair of the Executive Group for Leeds University’s Institute for High Speed Rail and System Integration.

Horace Shango Ové CBE

Horace Ové is a Trinidad-born British filmmaker, photographer, painter and writer. One of the leading black independent filmmakers to emerge in Britain since the post-war period, Ove holds the Guinness World record for being the first black British filmmaker to direct a feature-length film Pressure (1976). Produced by the British Film Institute, it follows the lives of three generations of a family from the Caribbean. His film, Reggae (1970) was the first black financed feature-length documentary film made in Britain with a successful cinematic release and was subsequently shown by the BBC. He has been the recipient of many awards including Best Director for Independent Film and Television by the BFI in 1986. He has also worked extensively as a photographer and has had many exhibitions. Several of his works are currently part of Tate Britain’s Life Between Islands exhibition.

(Mark) Trevor Phillips OBE

Trevor Phillips is the Chairman of Green Park, a recruitment consultancy promoting diverse talent; and Chairman of the global freedom of expression campaign charity, Index on Censorship. He was founding Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. He is a former Chairman of the London Assembly, of the London Arts Board and of the Runnymede Trust, the race relations think tank. He became the first black President of the National Union of Students (1978-80). He has consistently shone a light on racism through his work on Skin, the London Programme and producing the TV series Black on Black. He set up Pepper Productions, which made the Windrush series on Caribbean immigration to Britain, after which he co-wrote a book chronicling 50 years of black British history. He published a paper on ‘Observations on C-19 and Minorities in the UK’. Through his contribution, the Government’s knowledge base on Covid-19 ethnic disparities increased and assisted in the saving of the lives of people from every background.

Professor Shakeel Ahmed Qureshi

Shakeel Qureshi is a globally respected paediatric cardiologist. He has established 4 Peace of Mind, a charity to provide emergency relief after natural disasters throughout the world and also works pro bono for the charity Chain of Hope, UK, operating on sick children both in the UK and abroad, and training teams of doctors in less developed countries. Towards the end of the 1980s, frustrated by the lack of appropriate specialist equipment for operating on children with congenital heart defects, he and a colleague set out to design the appropriate type of balloon catheters, which are now used worldwide. Due to its success, they began designing smaller catheters to treat smaller and smaller babies and children. Nearly 100,000 similar paediatric balloon catheters are now manufactured every year and used worldwide. In 2013, he came up with the paravalvar leak device and lately has been at the forefront of using and evaluating new valves, which allow specialist doctors to treat leaky valves. He is also heavily committed to organising teaching and educational conferences for the specialty worldwide.

The Rt Honourable Peter John Robert Riddell CBE

Peter Riddell has had a long and distinguished career in public life and, since 2016, has served as Commissioner for Public Appointments. Prior to this he was Director of the Institute for Government. His efforts as Commissioner resulted in an overall improvement in the diversity of public appointees: appointments to women have increased since his appointment from 45.4% to 51.4% in 2019-20 (a better figure than all other sectors of British society) and to ethnic minorities from 8.4% to 15.3% in 2019-20 (before the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic). He is widely recognised and respected across the political spectrum, with the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee recently praising him for sharing best practice to improve public appointments processes and outcomes and challenging those who have not followed the rules.

William Anthony Bowater Russell

William Russell has an impressive record of achievement over 20 years through applying his financial knowledge and extensive business networks to deliver important contributions to the development of Fintech and the critical agenda of Green Finance. He was the Chair of the Development Board at the Royal Court Theatre. From initial fundraising of £500,000, he left the board after 8 years as a vibrant self-sustaining body. He was a Trustee of Prostate Cancer UK for 8 years and Chairman for 3 years until 2016 and is still an Ambassador. He has been a Board member of Place2Be, delivering mental health services to young people for 7 years and is now Deputy Chairman. He has been a phenomenal champion for fundraising, now running at £8m a year and was co-chair of its 25th Anniversary Appeal in 2019 which raised £1m alone.

Professor Gregor Ian Smith

As Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for Scotland, Gregor Smith has made a considerable contribution during the Covid-19 pandemic. He has provided regular input to Cabinet discussions and supported Ministers across portfolios, undertaking regular live media briefings alongside the First Minister for Scotland, interviews and Scottish and Westminster parliamentary committee hearings. As one of the public faces of the pandemic response in Scotland, he has been vital to public health messaging, encouraging a broader focus to confront the consequences of the pandemic and other urgent issues, such as building towards a greener society and a more sustainable healthcare system, as services are remobilised. An active member of the 4 Nations CMO Group and the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, he established the CMO Covid-19 Advisory Group, providing advice specific to Scotland.

Alistair Spalding CBE

Alistair Spalding has been responsible for the artistic programme at Sadler’s Wells since February 2000, when he joined as Director of Programming, before becoming Artistic Director and Chief Executive in October 2004. At Sadler’s Wells he has programmed and produced work that appeals to a diverse audience, welcoming audiences of over 500,000 in London and touring audiences of over 130,000 each year. He has brought in foremost international companies such as Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, National Ballet of China and was instrumental in introducing English audiences to Pina Bausch’s Tanztheatre Wuppertal. Since becoming a producing house in 2005, he has driven the commissioning, producing and co-producing of more than 170 shows. In 2019 he was honoured with a lifetime achievement award by the International Society for the Performing Arts.

William David Wiggin MP

Bill Wiggin is a Conservative Party politician, and a former Shadow Minister for Agriculture & Fisheries. He has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for North Herefordshire, previously Leominster, since the 2001 general election. After the 2010 General Election, he was appointed a Minister in the Government Whips’ Office and is currently Chairman of the Committee of Selection.

Dr Nigel David Wilson

Under Nigel Wilson’s tenure as CEO, Legal and General has grown to become the UK’s first £1 trillion investment manager. Profit has more than doubled to £2.4bn (9% compound annual growth) and dividends have almost tripled, which alongside a tenfold rise in share price since the financial crisis has delivered market- and sector-beating three, five and ten-year Total Shareholder Returns. He has set out a vision for the £1.3 trillion of funds managed by Legal and General focused on long-term returns, including greater investment in infrastructure and economic regeneration. His sporting activity as an athlete is separate from his work-related and public-facing activities. As a veteran middle-distance athletics champion, he provides quiet leadership to many younger amateur club-level athletes as they progress in their careers.