| The Right Honourable The Lord Black of Brentwood |
|
|---|---|
| Personal details | |
| Born | 6 August 1964 Brentwood, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party | Conservative |
| Spouse(s) | Mark Bolland |
| Alma mater | Peterhouse, Cambridge University |
Guy Vaughan Black, Baron Black of Brentwood (born 6 August 1964, Chelmsford, Essex) is Executive Director of the Telegraph Media Group and a Conservative member of the House of Lords.[1] He was introduced into the Lords on 13 July 2010 by Lord Wakeham and Lord Marland, and made his maiden speech on 21 July on the role of older women in civic society and the particular problems of osteoporosis.
The elder of twins, he was educated at Brentwood School and then Peterhouse, Cambridge. He graduated from there with double first class honours in history in 1985, having won the Sir Herbert Butterfield Prize for history.
His career has spanned politics and the media. His first political job was in the Conservative Research Department from 1986-89, which he left to become Special Adviser to the Secretary of State for Energy, John (now Lord) Wakeham, who was then spearheading the privatisation of the electricity industry. After the 1992 election he spent four years in public affairs, working for Westminster Strategy and then Good Relations.
In 1996 he returned to work for Lord Wakeham as Director of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC). During his time there he was responsible for the tightening of the Code of Practice in the wake of the death in 1997 of Diana, Princess of Wales, and for putting in place the arrangements to protect the privacy of Princes William and Harry. During the passage of the Human Rights Act, he successfully battled to have special protection established in the legislation to protect freedom of expression.[2]
In December 2003 he became Director of Communications for the Conservative Party, and Press Secretary to Rt Hon Michael Howard MP, Leader of the Opposition.[3] He returned to the media after the 2005 General Election, joining the Telegraph Media Group in September that year.
In September 2009 be became Chairman of the Press Standards Board of Finance, the body responsible for funding the PCC and overseeing the industry's system of self regulation. He also sits on the Advertising Standards Board of Finance (ASBOF),[4] which performs a similar role in funding the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
Black is Chairman of the Commonwealth Press Union Media Trust,[5] which seeks to preserve and enhance media freedom throughout the Commonwealth. He has been a Trustee of the Imperial War Museum since 2007[6] and was appointed a member of the Council of the Royal College of Music in 2009.[7] In 2010 he became a member of The Guild of St Bride's, Fleet Street. He was a Trustee of the Sir Edward Heath Charitable Foundation until he resigned in January 2009.
In a speech in the House of Lords on 25th November 2010 he attacked the use of "conditional fee" arrangements in cases involving privacy and libel. He said: "there is currently no more serious threat to media freedom and to the public’s right to know than the unfettered use by claimant lawyers of CFAs backed by the toxic combination of 100% success fees and 'after the event insurance.'
He has been the civil partner of Mark Bolland since 2006 and is the first openly gay Tory peer.