Conservative Peer and Member of the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee

Baroness Perry is a Conservative Peer and Member of the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee. After graduating from Girton College, Cambridge, she worked as a teacher and lecturer, before joining HM Inspectorate at the Department of Education and Science in 1970. She was appointed Chief Inspector of Schools in 1981. In 1986 she became Vice-Chancellor of South Bank Polytechnic, and serving during its transition to a university became the first woman in history to run a British university. She subsequently held other roles in higher education, including pro-chancellor of the University of Surrey and President of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge.

She has also been active in the Southwark Cathedral and Church of England community and the City of London. She was appointed chair of the review group examining the operation of the Crown Appointment Commission, the body which nominate Diocesan Bishops.

Baroness Perry was awarded the Freedom of the City of London in 1991 and became a life peer as The Right Honourable Baroness Perry of Southwark, of Charlbury in the County of Oxfordshire the same year. She sits on the Conservative Party benches. She was a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics 2003-2005 and chaired the Working Party on the Ethics of research involving animals (2003-2005) Chair, Commission on Secondary Reorganisation for the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, Chair, Commission on Academies and Free Schools in the London Borough of Wandsworth.