John Buttifant Sewel, Baron Sewel CBE, BA, MScEcon, PhD, LL.D (born 15 January 1946) is a Labour Party member of the House of Lords, former Senior Vice Principal of the University of Aberdeen and former parliamentary Under-Secretary of State. He was made a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland in 1997, where he assisted in steering through the legislation that led to the recreation of the Scottish Parliament. His name is given to the Sewel motion, parliamentary device passed by the Scottish Parliament, in which it agrees that the United Kingdom parliament may pass legislation on a devolved issue extending to Scotland, over which the Scottish Parliament has regular legislative authority. He left ministerial office in 1999 upon the new Parliament taking over the majority of the Scottish Office's functions.
Sewel was educated at Durham University before taking his MSc at University College of Wales, Swansea and studying for his PhD at Aberdeen University.[1][2] He had joined the University of Aberdeen as a Research Fellow in the Department of Politics in 1969. During the next three decades he worked in the Departments of Education and Political Economy and also the Regional Centre for the Study of Economic and Social Policy, where he was appointed to his Chair. In 1988 he became the Dean of the then Faculty of Economic & Social Sciences. Subsequently, in 1995, he was appointed Vice-Principal and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences & Law.
He was first elected to political office as an Aberdeen District Councillor in 1974, serving as Council Leader from 1977 to 1980, and also as President of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities from 1982 to 1984. He was an influential member of the Scottish Constitutional Convention from 1994 to 1995. In January 1996 he was created Lord Sewel of Gilcomstoun, and became Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Scottish Office from 1997 to 1999, serving as the Minister for Agriculture, Environment and Fisheries. As such he piloted the Scotland Act 1998 through Parliament and helped draft the plans for the new Scottish Parliament. At the first election to the Parliament, Sewel was a candidate as third on the Labour Party list for North East Scotland, but was not elected.
Sewel returned to the University of Aberdeen to resume his role as Vice-Principal in 1999 and was subsequently Senior Vice-Principal from 2001 to 2004. As an active member of the House of Lords, Sewel chairs the European Union Select Committee in Agriculture, the Environment and Fisheries and is a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. His interests focus around European Union and NATO enlargement, constitutional change and rural development.
Sewel is married to Jennifer and has two children and two step-children. He enjoys cricket, golf, reading, hill-walking and cooking.