Sir David Stephens KCB CVO (25 April 1910 – 3 April 1990) was a British public servant and Clerk of the Parliaments from 1963 to 1974.[1] He was educated at Winchester College, Christ Church, Oxford and The Queen's College, Oxford.
He became a Clerk in the House of Lords in 1935, but left in 1938 to become a member of the Runciman Commission to Czechoslovakia.[1] In the same year he transferred to HM Treasury.[2] From 1947 to 1949 he was Principal Private Secretary to Herbert Morrison as Lord President of the Council.[2] From 1955 to 1961 he was Secretary for Appointments to the Prime Minister, serving first Sir Anthony Eden and then Harold Macmillan.[2] In 1960 he was made CVO.[3]
In 1961 he returned to the House of Lords as Reading Clerk.[4] He was appointed Clerk of the Parliaments in 1963,[5] and made KCB in 1964.[6]
After his retirement in 1974 he served from 1976 to 1981 as Chairman of the Redundant Churches Fund[1] (now the Churches Conservation Trust).
In 1941 David Stephens married Clemency Gore Browne.[7] They had three sons and a daughter. His youngest son, Christopher Stephens, was appointed Chairman of the Judicial Appointments Commission in 2011.[8] His daughter Caroline married Richard Ryder, later Lord Ryder of Wensum, in 1981.[9] After the death of his first wife in 1966,[10] Sir David Stephens married Charlotte Manisty in 1967.[11]