John Sewel, Baron Sewel
The Lord Sewel | |
|---|---|
| Chairman of Committees | |
| In office 9 May 2012 – 26 July 2015 | |
| Lord Speaker | The Baroness D'Souza |
| Preceded by | The Lord Brabazon of Tara |
| Succeeded by | The Lord Laming |
| Member of the House of Lords | |
| Life peerage 10 January 1996 – 30 July 2015 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | John Buttifant Sewel 15 January 1946 |
| Party |
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| Spouses | Rosemary Langeland
(m. 1968–1986)Leonora Harding
(m. 1988–2002)Jennifer Lindsay (m. 2005) |
| Children | 2 |
| Alma mater | Durham University University College of Wales, Swansea University of Aberdeen |
John Buttifant Sewel, Baron Sewel, CBE (/ˈsuːwəl/; born 15 January 1946), is a British politician, life peer, and former academic. He served as Chairman of Committees of the House of Lords, its deputy speaker. He is also a former senior vice principal of the University of Aberdeen and a former parliamentary under-secretary of state.
He was made a Labour minister in the Scottish Office department of the Blair Government as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland in 1997, where he assisted Donald Dewar in steering through the legislation that led to the creation 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. Sewel left the House of Lords in 2015 after photos of him taking drugs with prostitutes emerged.