Ruth Lynn Deech, Baroness Deech, DBE (née Fraenkel; b. 29 April 1943, Clapham, London) is a British academic, lawyer and bioethicist, most noted for chairing the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), from 1994 to 2002. Lady Deech sits as a Crossbench peer in the House of Lords (since 2005) and Chairs the Bar Standards Board (since 2009).
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Deech studied Law at St Anne's College, Oxford, graduating with a first in 1965. She returned to the college in 1970 to be a tutorial fellow in Law, a job she retained until 1991 when she was elected principal of the college. She retired in 2004, and was succeeded by Tim Gardam. The college has since named its latest building after her; the Ruth Deech Building, the fourth to be named for a principal.[1]
Deech held many other positions during her career; she served as Senior Proctor of the University of Oxford between 1985 and 1986, as a member of the University's Hebdomadal Council of the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority from 1994 until 2002, and was appointed to a four year term as a Governor[2] of the BBC in 2002, the same year that she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE), in recognition of her work at the HFEA.[3]
After leaving St. Anne's, Deech was appointed the first Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education from 2004 to 2008, dealing with the resolution of student complaints at all UK universities.[4]
On 22 July 2005, it was announced by the House of Lords Appointments Commission that she would be made a life peer, sitting as a Crossbencher.[5] On 5 October 2005, she was created Baroness Deech, of Cumnor in the County of Oxfordshire, and introduced in the House of Lords on 25 October 2005.[6] She delivered her maiden speech on 24 November 2005.[7]
In 1999, The Observer newspaper named her as the 107th most powerful person in Britain, and in 2001, Deech was placed at no.26 in Channel 4's "The God List", which ranked "the fifty people of faith in Britain who exercise the most power and influence over our lives".[8] In November 2007, Deech published IVF to Immortality: Controversy in the Era of Reproductive Technology, with co-author Anna Smajdor.[9]
Deech is currently the Professor of Law at Gresham College in London, where she presents a series of public lectures on family relationships and the law.[10]
Baroness Deech is married to a solicitor and has one daughter. She was a member of the Jewish Leadership Council until 2010, was a Rhodes Trustee 1996-2006, and a founding Trustee of The Mandela Rhodes Foundation. Her interests include travel, opera, theatre, entertaining and public speaking.
Deech is the daughter of the late historian and journalist, Josef Fraenkel, who fled Vienna and then Prague from the Nazis in 1939. He arrived in Britain on 3 September 1939, the day the Allies declared war on Germany. Several other members of her family were murdered in Nazi concentration camps in German occupied Poland during World War II. Her first cousin is Maurice Frankel, Director of the UK Campaign for Freedom of Information.