Members' Biographies
Sir Richard Tilt joined the Prison Service in 1966 as a graduate entrant, and worked in a variety of prison establishments before governing Bedford and Gartree prisons. From 1990 he worked in Prison Service HQ, first as Head of Industrial Relations, then as Director of Services. In 1994 he was appointed Director of Security, and in the same year he became Director-General. He retired from the Prison Service in 2000. He was an NHS Chair for six years and is the Social Fund Commissioner. In 2007 he was appointed to chair the Independent Complaints Panel for the Portman Group (Alcoholic Drinks Industry Regulation). He is a governor of de Montfort University. He was a Churchill Fellow in 1991 and was knighted in 1999.
Kwame Akuffo has been a law teacher since 1982 and is currently a Senior Lecturer at Ealing Law School, Thames Valley University. He has worked for many years in community relations and community legal service delivery. He is Vice Chair of Ealing Racial Equality Council and runs a free law clinic, the Community Advice Programme (CAP), where he currently serves as Chairman. He teaches International Human Rights, Public International Law and Trusts. His research interests include International and Comparative Law, race relations and Law in Development. He also sits as a JP and a member of the Steering Committee of Ealing Community Legal Services Partnership. He was a member of the Independent Monitoring Board at HMP Wormwood Scrubs .until February 2004.
Les Allamby is Director of Law Centre (NI). He is a solicitor and sociology and social administration graduate. He is a social security adviser involved in advocacy before the Social Security Commissioner, and with taking cases to the ECJ and ECHR on social security issues. He is currently a member of the Legal Services Commission in Northern Ireland and from 2006, was a member of the Legal Services Review Group in Northern Ireland. From 1999-2004 he was the Chairperson of the Standards Committee for Northern Ireland, reporting on the quality of decision making for social security and child support. He has written widely on legal and social policy issues. He has also served as an election monitor and supervisor in Bosnia and Pakistan.
Simon Bartley is Managing Director of S4 Consulting Limited and Non-Executive Director or Company Secretary of a number of other Companies. He was educated at Durham University where in 1979 he graduated with a BSc in Engineering Science and Management and in 1985 with a MSc in Management Science. He is currently undertaking a Doctorate in Business Administration doing research into Small Businesses and Vocational Education. Simon is a Chartered and a European Engineer, a Member of both the Institution of Civil Engineers and of CIBSE and is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering Technology and of City & Guilds. He is Chair of SummitSkills, the Sector Skills Council for the Building Services Engineering Sector which covers the electrotechnical, heating, ventilating, air conditioning, refrigeration and plumbing industries, a Member of The City & Guilds of London Institute Council and a Director of both SFEDI and the Council for Enterprise. Simon's other business representations include him being a Member of the Small Business Council as well as being past Chair of the CBI's Small and Medium Enterprise Council. He currently Chairs both the 14-19 Diploma Steering Group for Construction and the Built Environment and the BSI SME Policy Committee.
Brigid Campbell studied Classics before entering the civil service, working mainly with expert advisory committees in the medical field. She subsequently underwent teacher training, spent five years in a Citizens Advice Bureau, and went on to study law and qualify as a solicitor. After a short spell in practice, she joined the teaching staff of The College of Law and became the College's Head of Welfare Law, co-authoring the student textbook used for the Legal Practice course. She was appointed to the Independent Tribunal Service (now The Appeals Service) in 1995, and sits as a part-time Chairman, with particular experience in disability and incapacity appeals. Since retiring from the College of Law in 2000 she has returned to Citizens Advice. She is currently a member of the Technical Working Group providing advice to the DWP on the reform of the Personal Capability Assessment.
Dr Angus Erskine is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Applied Social Science, in the University of Stirling. He has taught at the Universities of Stirling, Glasgow and Edinburgh and the, then, Sunderland Polytechnic. He has many years of experience working with local area-based anti-poverty initiatives. His most recent research has been race issues. He is particularly interested in social security delivery in rural areas. He was Chair of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Social Policy and Review Editor for the Journal of Social Policy. He has researched and written on social security, employment, social exclusion and poverty and co-edited The Student's Companion to Social Policy and The Dictionary of Social Policy.
Richard Exell OBE is the TUC's Senior Policy Officer responsible for social security. He took part in the European Commission's discussions leading to the Recommendations on Minimum Standards in Social Protection and the Guarantee of Benefits and Resources, and was a member of the trade union team in the discussions leading to the conclusion of the European agreement on parental leave. He has acted as rapporteur's expert for the Economic and Social Committee on two reports, including that on social exclusion. He is a member of the Disability Rights Commission.
Alison Garnham is joint-Chief Executive of the Daycare Trust, taking up her position in June 2006. Prior to this, for nine years she was the Director of P olicy and Research at One Parent Families. She worked for many years as a welfare rights adviser and for a number of women's organisations before, in 1989, joining the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) where she coauthored a number of publications about the Child Support Act. She has subsequently written about lone parenthood and child poverty, including an edition of Poverty: the Facts, published by CPAG. Before joining One Parent Families she was Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of North London (now London Metropolitan University) where she has also been remains an Honorary Research Fellow.
Professor Helen (Elaine) Kempson is Professor of Personal Finance and Social Policy Research at the University of Bristol. She is also Director of the Personal Finance Research Centre at the University. For the past 20 years she has undertaken research into various aspects of money management and use of personal financial services, especially among Iow-income families. In recent years, this has included a large body of work on access to financial services and financial exclusion. She was a member of the HM Treasury Policy Action Team 14 on Access to Financial Services and a member of the DTI Foresight Panel on Personal Financial Services. In 2002 she undertook the first independent review of the Banking Codes, and was reappointed to review the codes again in 2004. She also undertook the independent assessment of the Financial Ombudsman Service in 2004. Elaine is currently a member of the Financial Inclusion Taskforce, the Banking Code Standards Board and the DTI Advisory Group on over-indebtedness.
Laurie Naumann took early retirement from the Scottish Council for Single Homeless in 1999. He had been involved in setting it up and was director from 1978. From 1992 to 1995 he was seconded to The Scottish Office Social Work Services Inspectorate. Between 1981 and 1992 he was secretary of the Care in the Community Scottish Working Group. He is currently undertaking a mixture of voluntary and self-employed work in the housing and social service field and on voluntary sector issues, mainly in Scotland. At present he is Chair of the Highland Housing and Community Care Trust, the Consultation and Involvement Trust Scotland and the Refugee Survival Trust. He is a board member of Garvald Centre Edinburgh, the Kingdom Housing Association, the Voluntary Action Fund and FEAT Enterprises.
Professor Anthony Ogus CBE holds a Chair of Law at the University of Manchester, having previously held appointments at the Universities of Leicester, Oxford and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He has worked with social scientists in appraising different aspects of law and has written extensively on welfare law, including a textbook on social security. He is a member of the Editorial Advisory Committee of the Journal of Social Security Law. He has also served on committees of the Economic and Social Research Council. In 2002 he was awarded the CBE for services to the Social Security Advisory Committee and in 2007 was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.
Pat Smail is a research consultant and partner in Focus Consultancy, undertaking social research and evaluations across the public and charitable sectors. She has been a non-executive director of Gwent Healthcare NHS Trust for nine years; she was Trust Convenor for Complaints and now holds special responsibility for children's services. She is a registered social worker and has worked in both Wales and England, primarily in children and family services. She is past Chair of MIND Monmouthshire and retains an interest in mental health policy. Her current research interests include severe child poverty, children and young people's participation in decision-making and community regeneration. She takes a particular interest in equality and diversity issues.
Professor Janet Walker is Emeritus Professor of Family Policy in the Institute of Health and Society at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Until 2005 she was director of the Newcastle Centre for Family Studies and led over 40 studies in the fields of marriage and divorce, parenting, and criminal justice. She has been an expert consultant for the Council of Europe and a non-executive Director of Newcastle City NHS Trust where she was responsible for dealing with complaints from the public and overseeing services for the elderly. She is Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Family and Parenting Institute and Trustee of the new National Academy of Parenting Practitioners. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and of the Academy of Learned Societies for the Social Sciences.
Professor Robert Walker is Professor of Social Policy, University of Oxford and Fellow of Green College. He has devoted his career to informing policy advance on issues related to social security, poverty and social exclusion in Britain and elsewhere through the assembly and dissemination of evidence and by direct engagement in the policy process. After a spell in the civil service, he worked at the Universities of Kent and York before directing the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University and becoming Professor of Social Policy, University of Nottingham. He has undertaken over 60 research projects and published 18 books including 'Social Security and Welfare' (OUP-McGraw-Hill2005). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.