Keir Starmer

## Sir

Keir Starmer KCB KC MP

Official Portrait, 2015

## Politics

### Occupation

Member of Parliament for Holborn and St Pancras, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party

## Biographical information

### Place of birth

Southwark, London, England

**Sir Keir Rodney Starmer** KCB KC (born 2 September 1962) is a British politician and barrister who has served as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party since 2015. He has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Holborn and St Pancras since 2015. He was previously Director of Public Prosecutions from 2008 to 2013. Ideologically, Starmer has been described as being on the soft left within the Labour Party.

## Early Life and Education

Starmer was born in Southwark, London, on 2 September 1962. He grew up in the small town of Oxted in Surrey. He was the second of the four children of Josephine a nurse, and Rodney Starmer, a toolmaker. His mother had Still's disease. His parents were Labour Party supporters, and named him after the party's first parliamentary leader, Keir Hardie. He passed the 11-plus examination and gained entry to Reigate Grammar School, then a voluntary aided selective grammar school. It was converted into an independent fee-paying school in 1976, while he was a student, although he was exempt from paying fees. Among his classmates were the musician Norman Cook, alongside whom Starmer took violin lessons, Andrew Cooper, who went on to become a Conservative peer, as well as future conservative journalist Andrew Sullivan; according to Starmer, he and Sullivan "fought over everything ... Politics, religion. You name it."

In his teenage years, Starmer was active in Labour politics; he was a member of the Labour Party Young Socialists in East Surrey. He was a junior exhibitioner at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama until the age of 18, and played the flute, piano, recorder and violin. Starmer studied law at the University of Leeds, graduating with first class honours and a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree in 1985, becoming the first member of his family to graduate. He undertook postgraduate studies at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, graduating from the University of Oxford as a Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) in 1986. From 1986 to 1987, Starmer edited the radical magazine *Socialist Alternatives*.

## Legal Career

### Barrister

Starmer became a barrister in 1987 at the Middle Temple, becoming a bencher there in 2009. He served as a legal officer for the campaign group Liberty until 1990. He was a member of Doughty Street Chambers from 1990 onwards, primarily working on human rights issues. He has been called to the bar in several Caribbean countries, where he has defended convicts sentenced to the death penalty. He assisted Helen Steel and David Morris in the McLibel case, in the trial and appeal in English courts, also represented them at the European court. The case was seen as a David and Goliath case; a large team of leading lawyers represented McDonald's and the legal bills were estimated at £10m. By contrast Steel and Morris were denied legal aid, they acted on their own with help from lawyers including Starmer.

Starmer was appointed Queen's Counsel on 9 April 2002, aged 39. In the same year, he became joint head of Doughty Street Chambers. Starmer served as a human rights adviser to the Northern Ireland Policing Board and the Association of Chief Police Officers, and was also a member of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's death penalty advisory panel from 2002 to 2008. He later cited his work on policing in Northern Ireland as being a key influence on his decision to pursue a political career: "Some of the things I thought that needed to change in police services we achieved more quickly than we achieved in strategic litigation ... I came better to understand how you can change by being inside and getting the trust of people". During this time he also marched and authored legal opinions against the Iraq War. In 2007, he was named "QC of the Year" by Chambers and Partners.

## Director of Public Prosecutions

In July 2008, Baroness Scotland of Asthal, Attorney General for England and Wales, named Starmer as the new head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and Director of Public Prosecutions. He took over from Ken Macdonald on 1 November 2008. Macdonald, himself a former defence lawyer, publicly welcomed the appointment. Starmer was considered to be bringing a focus on human rights into the legal system.

Within the first few months of his tenure, Starmer upheld the decision not to prosecute the police officers who had killed Jean Charles de Menezes in a UK High Court appeal lodged by the family. The family then gave up on pursuing charges and nobody has been charged with the death of de Menezes. Later in 2009, when the Conservative Party proposed repealing the Human Rights Act 1998, Starmer defended it as a "clear and basic statement of our citizens' human rights". Liberty and the Liberal Democrats supported Starmer, while the Conservative MP David T. C. Davies suggested that he should be sacked. In the same year, he called for the CPS to modernise by being more open to scrutiny and less reliant on paper files. In 2011, he introduced reforms that included the "first test paperless hearing".

In February 2010, Starmer announced the CPS's decision to prosecute three Labour MPs and a Conservative peer for offences relating to false accounting in the aftermath of the parliamentary expenses scandal. They were all found guilty. In the same year, he supported proposals to legally recognise different degrees of murder. In 2010, and 2012, Starmer said that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute two members of the UK security services for their alleged role in torture overseas; he supported further investigation. In July 2010, Starmer announced the decision not to prosecute the police officer Simon Harwood in relation to the death of Ian Tomlinson; this led to accusations by Tomlinson's family of a police cover-up. After a subsequent inquest found that Tomlinson had been unlawfully killed, Starmer announced that Harwood would be prosecuted for manslaughter. The officer was acquitted by a jury in July 2012 but dismissed from the police that September. In December 2010, Starmer changed the decision process, including requiring his personal approval, to prosecute women who withdraw accusations of rape after a woman was convicted for perverting the course of justice "despite judges' belief that her claim of long-term abuse, intimidation and rape at the hands of her husband was true". He later produced guidelines to prevent women in similar circumstances from being unfairly prosecuted. In 2011, thirteen serving and former police officers were prosecuted for perverting the course of justice in the 1988 murder of Lynette White. The prosecution were unable to provide documents which "could have helped" the defendants, that were claimed to have been destroyed by the police officer leading the case against them. The prosecution made the decision, approved by Starmer, not to offer any further evidence, and the trial collapsed. Starmer ordered a review into the circumstances that had led to the decision and ordered a further review in 2012 when the missing documents were found.

During the 2011 England riots, Starmer prioritised rapid prosecutions of rioters over long sentences, which he later thought had helped to bring "the situation back under control". Later that year, after revelations concerning the undercover police infiltration of environmental campaigns, Starmer ordered a review of related convictions and invited protestors convicted of aggravated trespass to appeal their sentences. Starmer declined to authorise a wider enquiry, after a report from the judge Christopher Rose found the issue to be a result of individual fault rather than a systemic problem.

In February 2012, Starmer announced that Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Chris Huhne, and his former wife, Vicky Pryce, would be prosecuted for perverting the course of justice in *R v Huhne*. Huhne became the first UK cabinet minister in history to be compelled to resign as a result of criminal proceedings. Starmer had previously said in relation to the case that "[w]here there is sufficient evidence we do not shy away from prosecuting politicians". Later that year, he wrote advice for prosecutors, saying that they should consider whether violent protestors organised or prepared for violence, compared to protestors who got "caught up in illegal actions". In the summer of 2012, journalist Nick Cohen published allegations that Starmer was personally responsible for allowing to proceed the prosecution of Paul Chambers in what became known as the "Twitter joke trial". Chambers' conviction of sending a message "of a menacing character" was quashed after a third appeal. The CPS denied that Starmer was behind the decision, saying that it was the responsibility of a Crown Court and was out of Starmer's hands. Later that year, Starmer published a plan for the criminal justice system to better handle cases of female genital mutilation; at the time, the offence had never been successfully prosecuted. At the end of 2012, he published guidance on prosecuting cases of grossly offensive posts on social media that called for caution in prosecuting cases, and considering whether users quickly removed posts or showed remorse.

In 2013, Starmer announced changes to how sexual abuse investigations are handled in the wake of the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal, including a panel to review historic complaints. In the same year, he published a study showing that false reports of rape were rare, saying that the "devastating impact of false allegations" and the perception that they are more common than the data support mean that police forces might adopt what he called a cautious approach that can "lead to injustice for victims" of rape. He also started an inquiry into the cause of a reduction in police reports of rape and domestic abuse. In the same year, he altered guidelines for those improperly claiming benefits enabling them to face ten years in prison under the Fraud Act instead of a maximum of seven years under more specific legislation.

Starmer left office in November 2013, and was replaced by Alison Saunders. Later that month, the Labour Party announced that Starmer would lead an enquiry into changing the law to give further protection to victims in cases of rape and child abuse. On 28 December, he said to BBC News he was "rather enjoying having some free time" and "considering a number of options". There was speculation at the time that he would stand as a Labour Party candidate for the UK Parliament.

## Political Career

Starmer was selected in December 2014 to be the Labour Party's prospective parliamentary candidate for the Labour UK constituency of Holborn and St Pancras, a safe seat, following the decision of the sitting MP Frank Dobson to retire. Starmer was elected at the 2015 UK general election with a majority of 17,048. After Ed MIliband resigned after losing the 2015 General Election Starmer supported Harold Lewis, who finished first place and is the current leader of the Labour Party. Starmer ran to be the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, and won after beating Bushra Alemail and George Balls.