Ruth Deech, Baroness Deech

Ruth Deech, Baroness Deech, DBE (b. 29 April 1943, Clapham, London) is a British academic, lawyer and bioethicist, most noted for chairing the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), from 1994 to 2002. Lady Deech sits as a Crossbench peer in the House of Lords (since 2005) and Chairs the Bar Standards Board (since 2009).

Career

Born as Ruth Lynn Fraenkel, Deech studied Law at St Anne's College, Oxford, graduating with a first in 1965. She returned to the college in 1970 to be a tutorial fellow in Law, a job she retained until 1991 when she was elected Principal of the college. She retired in 2004, and was succeeded as principal by Tim Gardam. The college has since named its latest building after her; the Ruth Deech Building, the fourth to be named for a principal.

She has held many other positions during her life; among others, she served as Senior Proctor of the University of Oxford between 1985 and 1986, as a member of the University's Hebdomadal Council of the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority from 1994 until 2002, and was appointed to a four year term as a Governor of the BBC in 2002, the same year that she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE), in recognition of her work at the HFEA.

After leaving St. Anne's, Deech was appointed the first Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education from 2004-8, dealing with the resolution of student complaints at all UK universities.

On 22 July 2005 it was announced by the House of Lords Appointments Commission that she would be created a life peer, sitting as a Crossbencher. The title was gazetted as Baroness Deech, of Cumnor in the County of Oxfordshire, on 5 October 2005. Lady Deech made her maiden speech on 24 November 2005.

In 1999, The Observer newspaper named her as the 107th most powerful person in Britain, and in 2001, Deech was placed at no.26 in Channel 4's "The God List", which ranked "the fifty people of faith in Britain who exercise the most power and influence over our lives". In November 2007, Deech published IVF to Immortality: Controversy in the Era of Reproductive Technology, with co-author Anna Smajdor.

She is currently the Professor of Law at Gresham College in London, where she presents a series of public lectures on family relationships and the law.

Personal life

Baroness Deech is married to a solicitor and has one daughter, a journalist. She was a member of the Jewish Leadership Council until 2010, was a Rhodes Trustee 1996-2006, and a founding Trustee of The Mandela Rhodes Foundation. Her interests include travel, opera, theatre, entertaining and public speaking.

Family

Deech is the daughter of the late historian and journalist, Josef Fraenkel, who fled Vienna and then Prague from the Nazis in 1939. He arrived in Britain on 3 September 1939, the day the Allies declared war on Germany. Several other members of her family were murdered in concentration camps in Poland during World War II. Her first cousin is Maurice Frankel, Director of the UK Campaign for Freedom of Information.

Her mother is Scottish.

See also

• House of Lords, Crossbench Peers [3]
• St Anne's College, University of Oxford [4]
• Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIA) [5]
• Gresham College [6]
• Bar Standards Board
• disliker of the Scots: send them home ( and her father Jewish too).

External links

• Announcement of her introduction at the House of Lords
• IVF to Immortality: Controversy in the Era of Reproductive Technology by Ruth Deech and Anna Smajdor, Oxford University Press, Nov 2007