Baroness Usha Prashar CBE

Chairman of the Judicial Appointments Commission

Usha Prashar has been Chairman of the Judicial Appointments Commission since October 2005. She was born in Kenya in 1948 and was educated at Wakefield Girls' High School, and the Universities of Leeds and Glasgow. She was awarded a CBE in 1994 and since 1999 has sat in the House of Lords as a crossbencher.

The Baroness has a distinguished record of public service, having been the First Civil Service Commissioner between 2000 and 2005. Before taking on that post she was executive chairman of the Parole Board for England and Wales for three years.

Formerly she was director of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations and director of the Runnymede Trust, and served as a member of the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice. She was also a member of the Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Legal Education and Conduct.

Baroness Scott of Needham Market

Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Communities and Local Government

Ros Scott was appointed a life peer in 2000 and sits on the Liberal Democrat benches as Baroness Scott of Needham Market.

Ros is an influential figure in local government. She was a Liberal Democrat councillor in Suffolk from 1991 to 2005, serving at both District and County level. Suffolk County Council was in joint Lib Dem/Labour control from 1993 to 2005, and Ros held a number of positions on the Council, including Group Leader.

She was appointed to the Local Government Association Transport Executive in 1997, and became Chair in 2001. Ros represented UK local government in Europe as a member of the Committee of the Regions from 1997 to 2001. She was a member of the Board of the public sector regulator The Audit Commission until she became the Party's front bench spokesman on local government in 2005.

Ros came into the Lords in May 2000 and went to work immediately on the Transport Bill and the Countryside Bill. She continues to work on transport issues in the Lords, but focuses mainly on her work as frontbench spokesman for the Department of Local Government and Communities. She is also a member of the Delegated Powers Sub Committee, an influential behind-the-scenes body which scrutinises all Government legislation to ensure that the powers which are delegated from Parliament to Ministers are appropriate.

Ros has a variety of interests outside Parliament and is much in demand as a speaker to outside organisations. She is a member of the think-tank, The Commission for Integrated Transport, and a non executive director of Entrust, the Landfill Tax regulator. Ros is a non executive director of The Lloyds Register, the first woman Board member in the Company's 200 year history.

Ros is very active within the Liberal Democrat Party, a regular attendee at conference and in demand as a speaker at constituency events. She was previously a member of the Federal Executive and has just been elected to the Federal Finance Committee. During the General Election, Ros was a member of the core campaign team as head of the group organising the programme of constituency tours and visits.

Ros lives in Needham Market, Suffolk and has two adult children, Sally and Jamie. She is a regular cinema goer, enjoys cooking and travelling and sings regularly with an acapella group based in London.

Rt Hon Kevin Barron MP

Chair, Health Select Committee

Kevin was educated at Maltby Hall Secondary School and began his working life as an underground electrician at Maltby Colliery. After studying social sciences at Sheffield University on a day release course he went on to Ruskin College, Oxford, as a mature student. He was elected as member of Parliament for the Rother Valley in 1983 when the constituency was divided into two.

From 1983-5 he was a Member of the House of Commons Select Committee on Energy, and then from 1985-88 he served as Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the Leader of the Labour Party, Rt Hon Neil Kinnock MP.

From 1988-92 he was Shadow Minister for Energy, and then from 1992-93 he served as a Member of the House of Commons Select Committee on the Environment. From 1993-95 he was Shadow Employment Minister.

In 1993 & 94 he originated the Private Members' Bill to ban the advertising and promotion of tobacco products. From October 1995 – April 97, he served as Shadow Health Minister. From May 1997 – January 2002, he was Chair of the PLP Health Committee

In May 1997 Kevin was appointed member of the Intelligence and Security Committee, and in August 2001 he was appointed to the Privy Council.

Since 2005, Kevin has chaired the Health Select Committee, and has been a member of the Liaison Committee, and the Standards and Privileges Committee.

Kevin is also Chair of: the All Party Group on the Pharmaceutical Industry; the All Party Group on Smoking and Health; the All Party British/Bulgarian Group; the All Party Film Group; the All Party Connecting Communities; and the All Party Earth Sciences Group.

Peter Luff MP

Chair, Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Select Committee

Peter has been a Worcestershire MP since 1992. He lives in the county with his wife, Julia. They have two grown-up children, Rosie and Oliver.

He worked for four years for Peter, now Lord, Walker when he was MP for Worcester. He then went on to be head of private office to the late Sir Edward Heath in the early 1980s. After this he became a successful businessman in the communications industry. He has also been company secretary of his family's retail stationery firm. He was educated at Windsor Grammar School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he read economics.

In 1997, Peter was appointed chairman of the Commons Agriculture Committee. In 2000, he joined the frontbench as an Opposition Whip. He served as Assistant Chief Whip from 2002 to 2005. Peter is now Chairman of the influential Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Select Committee.

Julia is Peter's secretary, working from his office in the county, making it easy to contact him with just a local phone call. She also organises his regular advice surgeries in Evesham and Droitwich Spa.

Peter's interests - politics and family apart - are photography, scuba diving, theatre and steam railways. He is a vice president of the Severn Valley Railway, Evesham Rowing Club, the Worcester Birmingham Canal Society and the Droitwich Canals Trust and is actively involved with many other local charities and organisations. He is patron of the county ME support group and chairman of the Worcester Cathedral Council.

He takes a close interest in many international issues and particularly in India.

Martin Stanley

Chief Executive of the Competition Commission

Martin was appointed Chief Executive of the Competition Commission in 2004. The Commission is an independent body which decides whether large firms may be allowed to merge with one another, investigates whether particular markets are working satisfactorily, and acts as a Court of Appeal from certain decisions by utility regulators.

Martin was born in 1948 and grew up in the North-East of England where he attended the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He then studied chemistry and economics at Oxford University.

Martin joined the civil service in 1971 and first worked in the Inland Revenue before moving to the Department of Trade and Industry where he held a number of senior positions. In particular, from 1990 to 1992, he was DTI's Principal Private Secretary, i.e. he led the teams which supported the day to day activities of the Secretary of State and other Ministers.

Martin particularly enjoys working closely with industry and, between 1992 and 1998, led a number of teams responsible for the Government's relations with, and support for, the vehicle, steel, engineering, offshore oil/gas and international projects industries.

Martin then transferred to the Cabinet Office where he was Director of the Regulatory Impact Unit, responsible for helping Government Ministers and Departments find the right balance between under-regulating (and so failing to protect the public) and over-regulating (and so failing to preserve freedoms, or creating excessive bureaucracy).

From 2000 until 2004 Martin was Chief Executive of the Postal Services Commission (Postcomm), the Government department that regulates the UK postal services industry. Reporting to a Chairman and 5 non-exec Commissioners, Martin oversaw the research and consultation which led to the opening of the whole of the UK postal market – previously a Royal Mail monopoly – to competition from other postal operators

Martin has held non-exec appointments with American Express and IBM, and, until 2004, was non-executive Chairman of Atmaana, a company which supports senior executives as they deliver critical projects.

Robert Rogers

Clerk of Legislation, House of Commons

After Tonbridge School and Lincoln College, Oxford, where he read linguistics, Norse and Celtic, Robert researched briefly (on Anglo-Saxon colour words!) before joining the Ministry of Defence equally briefly. In 1972 he was appointed an Assistant Clerk in the House of Commons. He has served in a range of procedural posts including Clerk of Private Members' Bills, and Select Committee posts including Clerk of the Select Committees on Defence and on European Legislation. He was Parliamentary Counsellor to the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe from 1992 to 1995. Robert was appointed a Principal Clerk in 1998 and since then has been Clerk of Delegated Legislation, Principal Clerk of Select Committees, Secretary of the House of Commons Commission, Clerk of the Journals, and Principal Clerk of the Table Office. He took up his present post in October 2006.

He is a Fellow of the Industry and Parliament Trust. Away from the House he is a Liveryman and Extra Member of the Court of the Skinners' Company, and a governor of a girls' secondary school in Hackney. At home in Herefordshire he is the independent Chairman of the Standards Committee of Herefordshire Council (also until recently of the Herefordshire and Worcestershire Fire Authority), and also chairs the Selection Panel of the West Mercia Police Authority. He has contributed to various books and journals on European and Parliamentary Affairs, and is co-author of the 6th edition of How Parliament Works (2006). In a professional capacity he has visited more than 50 parliaments worldwide. His recreations are music (he is a church organist), cricket (now mainly as spectator), shooting, sailing and the countryside.