Peter Spencer Bowness,Baron Bowness,CBE,DL (born 19 May 1943) is a British politician,solicitor,and life peer. Since 1996,he has been a member of the House of Lords.
Bowness is a qualified solicitor and notary public.[3] From 1970 to 2002,he was a partner at Weightman Sadler Solicitors in Purley,London Borough of Croydon. From 2002 to 2011,he was a consultant to Streeter Marshall Solicitors (the successor to the now merged Weightman Sadler Solicitors).[2] Since then,he has not practised as a solicitor or notary public.[3]
Political career
Councillor
Bowness became a councillor and soon rose within Conservative Party ranks,becoming Leader of Croydon Council,[4] London's largest borough. During the 1980s,Bowness was said to have been one of Margaret Thatcher's favourite Council leaders,and took part in the abolition of the GLC.[5][6] He was unusual amongst his Conservative colleagues,however,for supporting Ken Livingstone's low-cost public transport initiative,Fares Fair.
On 17 January 1996,Bowness was created a life peer as Baron Bowness,of Warlingham in the County of Surrey and of Croydon in the London Borough of Croydon.[7] From December 2002 to November 2006,he was member of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights.[3] From December 2003 to May 2014,he served on the European Union Committee.[3] He chaired the Foreign Policy Defence and Developmental Aid Sub-Committee of the EU Select Committee from 2003 to 2006,and chaired the Justice,Institutions and Consumer Protection Sub-Committee from 2009 to 2013.[2] Having originally sat as a Conservative,Lord Bowness left the party to become a non-affiliated peer on 23 November 2020,before becoming a crossbencher on 1 December 2021.[8]
OSCE
Lord Bowness has been a member of the British delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) since 2007. He was elected a Vice President of the Parliamentary Assembly in 2015 and re-elected in 2018,serving until 2020. In December of that year,Bowness—as the most senior Vice President—acceded to the presidency following the departure of Gigi Tsereteli,and served as President of the Parliamentary Assembly until July 2021.[9]
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