Bishop Wordsworth's Church of England Grammar School
Kenneth Macdonald
Kenneth Donald John Macdonald, Baron Macdonald of River Glaven QC
Lord Ken Macdonald QC (born 4 January 1953) is a British lawyer and politician who served as Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) of England and Wales from 2003 to 2008.In that office he was head of the Crown Prosecution Service. He was previously a recorder (part-time judge) and defence barrister. He is a life peer in the House of Lords, where he sits as a crossbencher and was previously a Liberal Democrat. He was Warden of Wadham College, Oxford until 2021.
Baron Macdonald became the first pupil of barrister Helena Kennedy, was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in July 1978 and became a Queen's Counsel in 1997. As a junior barrister he defended a number of terrorist suspects (both Provisional IRA and those from the Middle East), fraudsters and major drug dealers, he was also on the defence team for the Matrix Churchill trial. In the late 1990s, he was a co-founder of Matrix Chambers (a set of barristers' chambers specialising in human rights cases) with Cherie Booth and Tim Owen QC. In 2001 he became a recorder (a part-time judge) in the Crown Court. In August 2003 it was announced that Macdonald would succeed Sir David Calvert-Smith as DPP in October of that year. The appointment was immediately denounced by Opposition spokesmen as "rampant cronyism" and a "provocative appointment" due to Macdonald's business relationship with Cherie Booth (wife of then Prime Minister Tony Blair) and his lack of prosecution experience. Government officials, including both the Attorney General and Solicitor General defended the appointment as it had been made by an independent board consisting of First Civil Service Commissioner Baroness Prashar; Sir Hayden Phillips, Permanent Secretary at the Department for Constitutional Affairs; Sir David Omand, Permanent Secretary, Cabinet Office; and Sir Robin Auld, Lord Justice of Appeal. A few days after the announcement the press uncovered details of his earlier conviction, sparking fresh controversy. A fellow lawyer, David Pannick QC, writing in The Times defended Macdonald's appointment, and attacked the tabloid campaign against him; Macdonald's predecessor also dismissed the relevance of the drugs offence; and a report in The Independent also found support for the appointment from within the legal system.
As DPP, Macdonald established the Counter Terrorism Division, the Organised Crime Division, the Special Crime Division and the Fraud Prosecution Service. In office, he often took positions which were critical of the government. For example, he opposed ministers' rhetoric around the "War on Terror", preferring to see terrorist attacks in the UK as law enforcement issues. He was prominent in criticising government attempts to extend pre-charge detention to 42 days, arguing that due process protections should not be undermined and that the reform was unnecessary. Near the end of his term, leaders in The Guardian and The Times were strongly supportive of his record in office. In his last month in office, he warned against excessive use of surveillance powers being introduced by the government, saying: "We should be careful to imagine the world we are creating before we build it. We might end up living with something we cannot bear." He was awarded a knighthood in the 2007 New Year Honours.