Baroness Jay

Her father was former Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan,[1] and she was educated at Blackheath High School, Blackheath and Somerville College, Oxford. Between 1965 and 1977 she held production posts within the BBC, working on current affairs and further education television programmes.[1] She then became a journalist on the BBC's prestigious Panorama programme, and Thames Television's This Week. After her party's election victory in 1997, she became Health Spokesman and Minister for Women in the House of Lords. From 1998 she was Leader of the House of Lords, playing a pivotal role in the major reform that led to the removal of most of its hereditary members. She retired from active politics in 2001. A significant feature of her political career is that every office she held was an appointment; she was never elected to any public office. Among numerous non-executive roles that she has taken on since retiring from politics, she is a non-executive director of BT Group.[2] She is currently co-chair of the cross-party Iraq Commission (along with Tom King and Paddy Ashdown) which was established by the Foreign Policy Centre think-tank and Channel 4. Before her resignation, Jay gave an interview in which she said she did not believe in private education; it was afterwards revealed that her three children had all attended private schools. On her own part, she said she attended a "pretty standard grammar school", which was actually Blackheath High School, an independent school.