# Lord John Stevens, Baron Stevens of Kirkwhelpington

see vita on wikipedia →John Arthur Stevens, Extract:

Baron Stevens of Kirkwhelpington KStJ QPM DL FRSA (born 21 October 1942) was Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis (head of the Metropolitan Police Service) from 2000 until 2005. From 1991 to 1996, he was Chief Constable of Northumbria Police before being appointed one of HM Inspectors of Constabulary in September 1996. He was then appointed Deputy Commissioner of the Met in 1998 until his promotion to Commissioner in 2000. He was a writer for the News of the World, for £7,000 an article, until his resignation as the →hacking scandal progressed.

After his retirement as Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, on 6 April 2005 he was created a life peer as Baron Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, of Kirkwhelpington in the County of Northumberland. He headed a Metropolitan Police inquiry, →Operation Paget, into the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi Fayed, which reported its findings on 14 December 2006. Lord Stevens was asked by the Conservatives, under David Cameron, to be their candidate for the London Mayoral elections. He declined this offer.

On 29 June 2007, having become one of the UK’s leading security experts, in-coming Prime Minister Gordon Brown appointed Lord Stevens as his Senior Advisor on International Security Issues. David Cameron appointed Stevens as Chair of the Borders Policing Committee in 2007, a position he held for 9 months focussing on the reorganisation and policing of the UK's borders.

In 2011, he was appointed by Yvette Cooper MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Home Affairs to Chair an Independent Commission Policing Commission in to the Future of Policing in England and Wales. The Commission, due to report its findings in Spring 2013, was set up in place of a Royal Commission and is made up of nearly 40 members all of whom are experts in the fields of academia, politics, national and international policing/security as well as key figures from community initiatives and business. In addition the Commission has secured contributions from 35 academics from 25 Universities from around the world including, Oxford University, Cambridge University, Northumbria University and Harvard University.

….He holds a number of non-executive directorships. He is a non-executive director of Travelex and also sits on the board of LGC, the UK’s leading analytical laboratory providing chemical, biochemical and DNA-based analysis.

See also his profile on →BBC

Extract: “The extrovert, 6ft 3in, policeman served for 42 years and was knighted in 2000. He has been known as the “copper's copper” and also “Captain Beaujolais” because of his love of champagne and fine wines. His report into the death of Princess Diana, the cost of which is estimated to be around £2m, is due shortly. In May 2006 he hit the headlines again with comments about the investigation, called Operation Paget, stating that new evidence and witnesses had emerged, but declined to give further details. He also said “we have to do a job that draws a line under this, one way or another”.”