Atkinson: Work will be led by evidence
Barrister and Labour MP Catherine Atkinson has been elected as the new chair of justice select committee.
Ms Atkinson – who is the parliamentary liaison of the Society of Labour Lawyers – won a majority of backbench MPs in the first round of voting.
She received 250 of the 455 votes, well clear of non-lawyers Mary Creagh (92 votes) and Janet Daby (76), and solicitor Sarah Russell (37). The latter two currently sit on the committee.
She replaces another barrister, Andy Slaughter, who was named Solicitor-General when Andy Burnham became prime minister. Ms Atkinson was appointed the minister for victims and tackling violence against women and girls at the Ministry of Justice in May but left government with Sir Keir Starmer.
She was however named as health secretary Yvette Cooper’s parliamentary private secretary.
Ms Atkinson wrote on X last night: “With courts, prisons, probation and access to justice all under real pressure, rigorous parliamentary scrutiny matters more than ever.
“I look forward to working constructively with colleagues, listening to those with direct experience of the justice system and ensuring our work is led by evidence.”
She graduated from Edinburgh University with a first-class degree in divinity before undertaking the law conversion at City University. She was awarded the Lincoln’s Inn Gluckstein prize and was a Lord Haldane Scholar.
Called in 2006, she practised from Deka Chambers – created in 2022 through the merger of 1 Chancery Lane and 9 Gough Chambers – across a wide area of areas, with particular interests in personal injury, employment, fraud and public family cases. She is still an associate member.
She also handled police work, criminal injury compensation cases, stress claims, inquest work and abuse cases, and has been a contributing author to books on occupational health, employment law and clinical negligence.
At the weekend, she announced that she was setting up the Catherine Atkinson Future Lawyers Award at Derby University, using a settlement received from the Mail on Sunday after it wrongly accused her of attending private school and then concealing the fact.
“There are talented young people in our city who could go on to become brilliant solicitors, barristers, judges and advocates. Financial barriers should not be what decides whether they get that chance,” she said.
“Our justice system is stronger when the people working within it come from every background and understand the communities it exists to serve.
“My state education opened that door for me. I want to hold it open for the next generation.”
The award will grant £500 each year for at least 10 years and is open to first-year law students who were educated at a state school within the city of Derby.
Ms Atkinson stood in the then safe Conservative seat of Kensington and Chelsea in 2005, coming third, and was a councillor there from 2006 to 2010. She contested Erewash in Derbyshire in 2015, 2017 and 2019 – coming second each time – before winning Derby North in 2024.
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