Lynne Featherstone

Lynne Choona Featherstone, Baroness Featherstone, (née Ryness; born 20 December 1951) is a British politician, businesswoman and Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords.

Prior to entering politics, Featherstone was a successful businesswoman owning and running a London design company.

She was also a director of the Ryness chain of lighting and electrical shops.

Featherstone first contested the Hornsey and Wood Green seat at the 1997 general election where she finished in third place some 25,998 votes behind the winner Barbara Roche.

In 1998, Featherstone was elected a Councillor for the London Borough of Haringey representing Muswell Hill Ward.

She and her two colleagues (June Andersen and Julia Glenn) were the first three Liberal Democrats to be elected borough councillors.

She became Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group (and thereby Opposition Leader) on the Council 1998–2003.

A Member of the London Assembly (MLA) from 2000 to 2005, she was Member of Parliament (MP) for Hornsey and Wood Green between 2005 and 2015, before being nominated for a peerage in the Dissolution Peerages List 2015.

She was created Baroness Featherstone, of Highgate in the London Borough of Haringey on 20 October.

From 2000 until 2005, Featherstone was a Member of the London Assembly; during this time, she was Chair of the London Assembly Transport Committee.

She was also a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority for all five years she was on the London Assembly.

She was replaced as MLA by Geoff Pope.

She again fought Hornsey and Wood Green at the 2001 general election, moving into second place and reducing Roche's majority to 10,614.

In one of the largest swings at the 2005 general election, Featherstone defeated Roche with a majority of 2,395 votes.

She made her maiden speech in Parliament on 24 May 2005.

She was appointed as a LibDem junior Home Affairs spokesperson by Charles Kennedy in 2005, and to the environment audit select committee.

Although she stood down from Haringey Council before the May 2006 elections, Featherstone influenced the 2006 local elections in Haringey where Labour's majority was cut from 25 to 3, with 30 Labour Councillors elected to 27 Liberal Democrats.

She was co-chair of Chris Huhne's unsuccessful campaign to be leader of the Liberal Democrats following the resignation of Kennedy in January 2006.

In March, following the election of Menzies Campbell as party leader, she was promoted to number two in the Liberal Democrat home affairs team and made London spokesperson.

In December 2006, she succeeded Susan Kramer as the Liberal Democrat Shadow International Development Secretary, and two months later was succeeded by Tom Brake as London spokesperson.

In 2007, following the resignation of Sir Menzies Campbell, she again chaired Chris Huhne's leadership election campaign.

On 20 December 2007 the new Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, who defeated Chris Huhne, made her Youth and Equalities spokesperson.

Featherstone was promoted by some as a potential Liberal Democrat candidate for Mayor of London in the 2008 election.

In response to a poll on the Liberal Democrat Voice website, she ruled herself out, stating that, of the other people in the poll, she would back Brian Paddick.

In November 2008, at Prime Minister's Questions, Featherstone asked the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, to order an enquiry into the Connelly case.

Under the Conservative – Liberal Democrat coalition in 2010 she was appointed as a Home Office Minister with responsibility for criminal information and equalities, before being promoted, in 2012, to Minister with responsibility for International Development.

Previously she was Liberal Democrat spokesman for Youth and Equality issues, and chair of the Liberal Democrats technology board.

On 5 February 2013, Featherstone voted in favour in the House of Commons Second Reading vote on same-sex marriage in the United Kingdom, the bill which she spearheaded as Minister of State at the Home Office and was passed through the Commons despite Conservative backbench MP resistance.

She was given a score of 93% in favour of lesbian, gay and bisexual equality by Stonewall.

As originator and architect of the same sex marriage law during the coalition, Featherstone launched the consultation by the UK Government on introducing same-sex marriage and was the first politician to take part in the Out4Marriage campaign, gaining a special Ben and Jerry's ice cream tub and flavour Lynne Honeycomb and returned to the Home Office as Minister of State in November 2014.

Featherstone is a patron of Humanists UK.

Featherstone was born and brought up in North London, and educated at Highgate Primary School, the independent South Hampstead High School (then a direct grant grammar school) and gained a Diploma in Communication and Design at Oxford Polytechnic.

Her family business started by her parents was the Ryness chain of lighting and electrical shops in London.

The business was sold over a decade ago.

Prior to entering politics, Featherstone was a successful businesswoman running the Ryness chain of lighting and electrical shops in London and owning and running a London design company.

In the 2015 general election, she lost her seat to Labour's Catherine West.

Following the death of her constituent, 17-month-old Peter Connelly, Haringey Council initiated an internal audit Serious case review (SCR).

Although the actual report was completed months earlier, the Executive Summary of the report was released immediately after the resulting court case had completed.

The full details of the report have been kept confidential.

Featherstone had been particularly critical of Haringey Council, writing "I personally met with George Meehan and Ita O'Donovan – Haringey Council's Leader and Chief Executive – to raise with them three different cases, where the pattern was in each case Haringey seeming to want to blame anyone who complained rather than to look at the complaint seriously. I was promised action – but despite repeated subsequent requests for news on progress – I was just stonewalled."