Joan Walmsley, Baroness Walmsley

Who is Joan Walmsley, Baroness Walmsley?

Joan Margaret Walmsley, Baroness Walmsley is a British Liberal Democrat politician.

She was educated at Notre Dame High School in Liverpool, before attending Liverpool University from where she graduated with a BSc in Biology in 1966, and later completed a PGCE at Manchester Polytechnic in 1979. She worked as a Cytologist at the Christie Hospital in Manchester from 1965–1967 and taught at Buxton College from 1979–1986. She went into public relations and worked for Hill & Knowlton until 1996, then began her own PR consultancy which she closed in 2003.

In the 1992 general election she stood as the Liberal Democrat candidate in Morley & Leeds South, and Congleton in 1997 general election, but was defeated on both occasions.

She was raised to the peerage as Baroness Walmsley, of West Derby in the County of Merseyside in 2000, whereupon she took the Liberal Democrat Whip. She was the party's spokesperson in the House of Lords on: Education & Skills; Home Affairs; and again for Education & Skills from 2004 onwards. A member of the Science & Technology Select Committee 2000–2005, and then Chair of the Science & Technology Sub-Committee in 2002 which produced the report on taxonomy entitled “What on Earth? The threat to the science underpinning conservation”.