Pauline Neville-Jones, Baroness Neville-Jones

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The Right Honourable
 Baroness Neville-Jones
 DCMG
Pauline Neville-Jones, Baroness Neville-Jones

Born November 2, 1939 (1939-11-02) (age 68)
Political party Conservative

Lilian Pauline Neville-Jones, Baroness Neville-Jones DCMG (born 2 November 1939) is a former BBC Governor and Chairman of the British Joint Intelligence Committee. Before her elevation to the Peerage she was known as Dame Pauline Neville-Jones.

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[edit] Education

Neville-Jones was educated at Leeds Girls' High School and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford (Modern History).

[edit] Career

Pauline Neville-Jones was a career member of the UK Diplomatic Service from 1963 to 1996, during which time she served in British Missions in Rhodesia, Singapore, Washington, DC and Bonn. Between 1977 and 1982 she was seconded to the European Commission where she worked as Deputy and then Chef de Cabinet to Commissioner Christopher Tugendhat.

From 1991 to 1994 she was Head of the Defence and Overseas Secretariat in the Cabinet Office and Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet. For a very short period of just five weeks from the end of 1993 to the beginning of 1994 she was Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee (though in media appearances she quotes a "two-year chairmanship"). From 1994, until her retirement, she was Political Director in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, in which capacity she led the British delegation to the Dayton negotiations on the Bosnia peace settlement.

Neville-Jones was Chairman of the Audit Committee from 1998: she stood down from that position in September 2004.

She was appointed a BBC Governor in January, 1998. Her final post was as the Chairman of the Governors' World Service Consultative Group. She left the BBC on December 31, 2004 but whilst she was there, she was blamed by Greg Dyke for leading the Board of Governors' revolt against the BBC's senior management in the wake of the David Kelly/Andrew Gilligan affair. She was also non-executive chairman of QinetiQ, the UK/US defence company from 2002 to 2005 and her directorship of a firm which engaged in the arms trade with Iraq whilst at the same time wielding indirect executive power over the BBC's coverage of the war in Iraq raised serious questions over her objectivity and conflict of interest.

In January 2006 Dame Pauline joined one of the Conservative Party's new 'policy groups' on national security.

She is an Honorary Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and Doctor of the University of London and the Open University.

She was made a Commander of the Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in 1987, and was raised to Dame Commander (DCMG) in the 1995 New Year's Honours.

On 2 July 2007 it was announced that she would become shadow Security Minister and a working peer. This was gazetted as Baroness Neville-Jones, of Hutton Roof in the County of Cumbria on 15 October 2007.

[edit] Styles

  • Miss Pauline Neville-Jones (1939-1987)
  • Miss Pauline Neville-Jones CMG (1987-1995)
  • Dame Pauline Neville-Jones DCMG (1995-2007)
  • The Rt. Hon. The Baroness Neville-Jones DCMG (2007-)

[edit] External links