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UK Public Health Emergency Powers Meet The Commissioners

Rt. Hon. Sir Jack Beatson FBA (Chair)

Sir Jack Beatson was a member of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales between 2013 and 2018. Prior to that he served as a High Court judge, Law Commissioner for England and Wales, Member of what is now the UK's Competition Commission, and Rouse Ball Prof of English Law at Cambridge. He has written widely on contract, restitution and public law. His most recent book, completed during lockdown, is Key Ideas in Law: The Rule of Law and the Separation of Powers (2021).

Professor Anne-Maree Farrell

Professor Anne-Maree Farrell is Chair of Medical Jurisprudence at Edinburgh Law School and Director of the Mason Institute. Professor Farrell's research expertise lies generally in health law and bioethics. She is particularly interested in the relationship between politics and regulation in the area of health. She has specific interests in law and the human body, health security, the management of public health risks, clinical negligence and redress. She is admitted to legal practice as a solicitor in Australia, Ireland, England & Wales. Prior to becoming an academic, she worked as a lawyer in private legal practice specialising in mass torts, product liability and clinical negligence.

Professor David Feldman FBA FRSA

Professor David Feldman is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of English Law and Emeritus Fellow of Downing College in the University of Cambridge, and was appointed Queen's Counsel (now King's Counsel) honoris causa in 2008 "for his work in public law fields, particularly civil liberties and human rights". As well as several previous appointments in academic institutions, Professor Feldman was the first Legal Adviser to the Parliamentary Joint Select Committee on Human Rights in the Houses of Parliament from 2000 to 2004 and acted as Specialist Adviser to Joint Select Committee on the Detention of Terrorist Suspects (Temporary Extension) Bills, March to June 2011.

Dr Ruth Fox

Dr Ruth Fox is Director of the Hansard Society. Ruth's research focuses on parliamentary strengthening, constitutional reform, and public attitudes to politics. She is the co-author of 'The Devil is in the Detail: Parliament and Delegated Legislation', the first detailed study of the parliamentary scrutiny of delegated legislation for decades. In 2019-20 she was BBC Parliament's commentator for its coverage of the major Brexit votes. She regularly gives evidence to parliamentary select committees and inquiries, and contributes to a wide range of current affairs programmes on radio and television, commentating on parliamentary process and political reform.

Dr Joelle Grogan

Dr Joelle Grogan is Senior Researcher (Research Fellow) at UK in a Changing Europe, an independent think tank based at King's College London, and Research Fellow at the CEU Democracy Institute, Budapest. Her current focus is law and governance in times of crisis. Joelle was the Convenor of the 2020 'COVID-19 and States of Emergency' and the 2021 'Power and the COVID-19 Pandemic' Symposia, jointly hosted by the Verfassungblog, Democracy Reporting International and the RECONNECT project. Joelle served as an advisor to the European Economic and Social Committee on COVID-19 and the rule of law. She has published a number of articles, chapters, reports, and papers on the impact of the pandemic on governance globally, and is the co-editor of the Routledge Handbook on Law and the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Tom Hickman KC

Tom Hickman KC is a barrister at Blackstone Chambers practising in public and constitutional law, international law, regulatory law, commercial law, media entertainment and sports law. Tom has acted in many leading cases, including for Gina Miller in both the Miller claims. Tom is Professor of Public Law at University College London and regularly publishes articles, blogs and tweets on legal issues. Tom's evidence to parliamentary committees has been referred to in a number of committee reports, such as the House of Lords Constitution Committee's June 2021 report on the use of emergency powers during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Dr Ruth Hussey CB, OBE, DL

Dr Ruth Hussey retired as Chief Medical Officer for Wales in 2016 after nearly four years in the post. Born and brought up in north Wales, her career developed in England, initially training as a GP; working in academia; as Director of Public Health in Liverpool; and then in strategic leadership posts in north west England for the NHS and Department of Health. Prior to joining Welsh Government, she was part of the Public Health Transition Team in the Department of Health, Whitehall. Ruth is Deputy Chair of the Food Standards Agency, Deputy Chair of the Health Foundation, Chair of the advisory board for the NIHR, School of Public Health Research and Chair of the Care Inspectorate Wales Advisory Board as well as contributing to other research and policy groups.

Professor Jeff King

Professor Jeff King joined the UCL Laws as a Senior Lecturer in 2011 and has been Professor of Law since 2016. He is currently Director of Research at the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law and was between 2019-2021 a Legal Adviser to the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution. Jeff's research interests include UK and comparative public law (including international law), constitutional theory and socio-legal studies. Within these, he is particularly interested in the relationship between public law, democracy and social policy. He is currently working on the use and abuse of delegated powers, comparative legal responses to Covid-19, and is writing a book on the social dimension of the rule of law.

Professor Fiona de Londras

Professor Fiona de Londras is Professor of Global Legal Studies at Birmingham Law School. Her research concerns constitutionalism, human rights, and transnationalism. She is particularly interested in the role and function of rights in contentious policy fields, inquiring into how (if at all) rights shape the making of law and policy in complex contexts. Fiona led the AHRC-funded Covid-19 Review Observatory, which studied COVID-19 review in the four parliaments in the United Kingdom considering how parliaments engaged with Covid-19 law- and policy-making to enhance rights protection, government accountability, and the Rule of Law.

Lord Naren Patel

Lord Patel is a crossbench peer in the House of Lords. He joined the House of Lords in 1999 and has served on a number of Committees, most recently chairing the Science and Technology Committee from 2017-2022. Prior to his career in the House of Lords, Lord Patel worked as an obstetrician for more than thirty years at Dundee's Ninewells Hospital, becoming a consultant obstetrician in 1974. He is currently Emeritus Professor and a former Chancellor at the University of Dundee.

Reema Patel

Reema Patel is a Research Director and Head of Deliberative Engagement at Ipsos. Formerly she was Associate Director at the Ada Lovelace Institute, an independent organisation seeking to ensure that data & AI work for people and society where she led the organisation's public attitudes and public deliberation research, and was a member of its founding team. Reema has just over a decade's experience in public policy, and has led various citizen engagement initiatives on complex and controversial policy areas including the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) Citizens' Economic Council, which successfully worked with and influenced the Bank of England's public engagement strategy.

Adam Wagner

Adam Wagner is a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers specialising in human rights, public law and public inquiries. From 2020-2021, he was Specialist Advisor to Parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights Inquiry into the government's response to the pandemic. He has acted in a number of path-breaking cases relating to the pandemic, including #ReclaimTheseStreets' successful judicial review of the Metropolitan Police actions relating to the Sarah Everard vigil, the Good Law Project's challenge to the Metropolitan Police's refusal to investigate the Downing Street parties and two key judicial reviews of the hotel quarantine system. His new book, Emergency State, examines the constitutional and democratic implications of the COVID-19 laws. Adam is a Visiting Professor of Law at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Dr Hannah White OBE

Dr Hannah White has been Acting Director of the Institute for Government since August 2022. She has extensive knowledge of Westminster and Whitehall based on a career in parliament, the civil service and academia. Before running the Committee on Standards in Public Life in the Cabinet Office, she was a clerk in the House of Commons. She joined the Institute in 2014. Hannah received an OBE in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to the constitution, and in April 2022 she published her first book Held in Contempt: what's wrong with the House of Commons?

All commissioners are members of the Commission in a personal capacity and not as representatives of any organisations or institutions they are affiliated with.

  

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