John Sewel, Baron Sewel

John Buttifant The Lord Sewel, Baron Sewel CBE, BA, MScEcon, PhD, LL.D , Former Senior Vice Principal,University of Aberdeen and former parliamentary Under-Secretary of State. (born 15 January, 1946) is a Labour Party member of the House of Lords.

He was made a Life Peer as Baron Sewel, of Gilcomstoun in the District of the City of Aberdeen in 1996. 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.

John Sewel has elegantly juxtaposed careers in politics and academe throughout his life. 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 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. Susequently, in 1995, he was appointed Vice-Principal and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences & Law. However, in the mid 1990s, John Sewel's public and political service interrupted his role in University administration. He was an influential member of the Scottish Constitutional Convention from 1994 to 1995. In 1995 he was created Lord Sewel of Gilcomstoun. As such he piloted the devolution bill through Parliament and helped draft the plans for the new Scottish Parliament. As a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Scottish Office from 1997 to 1999, he was the Minister for Agriculture, Environment and Fisheries. Lord 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 , Lord 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.

ee also

*Sewel motion