Chiswick Mum Ranked UK’s 2nd Most Influential Black Woman

Lady Scotland amongst those with “greatest ability to shape opinion”

Chiswick mother of two Patricia Scotland has been named the second most influential black woman in the country.

New Nation newspaper, who assessed the country's best-known black women on the extent of their influence, placed the high-achieving lawyer in second place behind fellow Labour minister Valerie Amos in a table of the women with the greatest ability to shape opinion and policy.

The newspaper said the names on its list had been chosen because they have 'the power to instigate or influence changes of opinion or policy both in their own fields and also within the wider society.'

Baroness Scotland, whose London home is Chiswick, is a barrister and Home Office minister in charge of the criminal justice system and prisons. Choosing to send her two sons to a local state primary school, Patricia Scotland is herself one of twelve children. She was educated at London University where she earned her law degree.

She received a life peerage as Baroness Scotland of Asthal, on a Labour Party list of working peers before becoming Minister of State for the Criminal Justice system and Law Reform at the Home Office in 2003.

Amongst the other women named were TV presenter June Sarpong, recently awarded an MBE for her charity work, Yvonne Fasinro, a senior vice president at the JP Morgan Chase investment bank and Doreen Lawrence, mother of Stephen Lawrence, who has been a tireless campaigner on race issues.