Patricia Scotland
Patricia Janet Scotland, Baroness Scotland of Asthal PC QC (born 19 August 1955) is a British barrister who served in junior ministerial positions within the UK Government, most notably as the Attorney General for England and Wales and Advocate General for Northern Ireland. At the 2015 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting she was elected the 6th Secretary-General of the Commonwealth of Nations and took office on 1 April 2016. She is the first woman to hold the post. She is a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and Dominica.
Scotland was born in Dominica, the 10th child of 12 born to Roman Catholic parents a Dominican mother and Antiguan father. Her family emigrated to Walthamstow when she was two years old, where she attended Chapel End Secondary School and Walthamstow School for Girls. She then went on to Mid Essex Technical College in Chelmsford, where she obtained an external London University (LLB) law degree. She was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1977, specialising in family law, and was called to the Dominican bar in 1978.
In 1991, Scotland became the first black woman to be appointed a Queen's Counsel. She later founded 1 Gray's Inn Square barristers chambers. Early in 1997, she was elected as a Bencher of the Middle Temple. Scotland was named as a Millennium Commissioner on 17 February 1994, and was a member of the Commission for Racial Equality. She received a life peerage on a Labour Party list of working peers and was created Baroness Scotland of Asthal, of Asthal in the County of Oxfordshire on 30 October 1997.
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