On 25 June 2025 we will be hosting our traditional Parliamentary Day Lunch. This year’s distinguished guest speaker will be The Rt Hon. the Baroness Ashton of Upholland LG GCMG. 

Drinks will be available on the Cholmondeley Room Terrace from 12.15pm. Lunch will be served at 12.45pm in the Cholmondeley Room. The event will end at 2.30pm.

More information on our Guest of Honour can be found below:

The Right Honourable Baroness Catherine Ashton served as the European Union’s first High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy from 2009 to 2014. She earned wide praise as a negotiator, leading the P5+1 talks on Iran’s nuclear program and galvanizing agreement between Serbia and Kosovo. She is the author of ‘And Then What?: Despatches From the Heart of 21st-Century Diplomacy, From Kosovo to Kiev‘ (2023)- a book that chronicles her extensive experience as a high level diplomacy and policy maker. Serving as Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council in Gordon Brown’s cabinet in 2007, she was instrumental in ensuring the passage of the Treaty of Lisbon through the UK parliament. This accomplishment paved the way for her tenure as the British European Commissioner and subsequently as the Commissioner for Trade for the European Commission in 2008.

In recognition of her experience and contributions, she was made a Life Peer in the House of Lords in 1999. Her political journey began with an appointment as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Education and Skills in 2001, followed by a position in the Ministry of Justice in 2004. By May 2006, she was named a Privy Councillor, and in June 2007, she ascended to the position of Leader of the House of Lords.

Further cementing her legacy in academia, in January 2017, Baroness Ashton became the first female chancellor at the University of Warwick.