Dominican appointed new Attorney General in the UK

Dominican-born Baroness Patricia Scotland has been appointed Attorney General in the cabinet of the new British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

This is the first time in British history that a woman and black person has been elevated to the position of the government’s senior law advisor. Baroness Brown is also the only person of Caribbean origin named to the Brown’s cabinet.

Baroness Scotland had also served under the Blair administration as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Parliamentary Secretary at the Lord Chancellor’s Department and most recently as Home Office Minister of State for the Criminal Justice System and Law Reform.

Baroness Scotland was born in Dominica in 1956 and left for Britain at the age of 3 along with 10 other siblings.  In the UK, Baroness Scotland distinguished herself as a lawyer before entering the political arena in 1997. She was created a peer as Baroness Scotland of Asthal of the County of Oxfordshire in that same year. In 1991 Baroness Scotland made history by becoming the first black female Queens Council. She was made a bachelor of the Middle Temple in 1997, a judge in 1999 and was raised to the Privy Council in 2001. Baroness Scotland is also a member of the bar of Antigua and the Commonwealth of Dominica.

Among her long list of accomplishments, Scotland is an Honorary Fellow for the Society of Advance Legal studies, Wolfson College, Cambridge and Cardiff University, Dame of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of St.George, member of the Lawyers Christian Fellowship, member of the Millennium Commission, Chair of the HMG Caribbean Advisory Group, Dominican Representative of the Council of British Commonwealth Ex-Services league, Patron of the Margaret Beaufort Institute, the Frank Longford Charitable Trust, the Women and Children Welfare Fund and Sponsor of the George Viner Memorial Trust Fund. She is also a member of the Parliamentary Labour Party Women’s Group, the House of Lords All Party Parliamentary London Group, and the All Party Parliamentary Group for Children. The University of Westminster conferred on her an Honorary Doctorate.

Attorney General Ian Douglas joined hundreds of Dominicans in congratulating the new UK AG. In a letter issued earlier today he stated “Dominicans at home and abroad are elated and extremely proud that a Dominican has attained such a coveted position in Her Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom. Your presence in the upper echelons of the British Government can only serve to strengthen the excellent bilateral relations that our two countries currently enjoy”.