Parry Mitchell, Baron Mitchell

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The Right HonourableThe Lord Mitchell
Official portrait, 2024

Member of the House of Lords Lord Temporal
Incumbent
Assumed office 10 May 2000 Life Peerage

Personal details
Born	Parry Andrew Mitchell (1943-05-06) 6 May 1943 (age 81)
Nationality	British
Political party	Social Democrat Labour
Spouse	Hannah Lowy
Alma mater	University of London (BSc(Econ)) Columbia Business School (MBA)

Parry Andrew Mitchell, Baron Mitchell (born 6 May 1943) is a British businessman and Labour member of the House of Lords. On 10 May 2000, Mitchell was created a life peer as Baron Mitchell, of Hampstead in the London Borough of Camden, and introduced in the House of Lords on 24 May 2000. He sat on the Labour benches until he resigned from the party in September 2016. He rejoined the party in June 2020.

Education

Parry Mitchell holds a B.Sc. (Econ) from the University of London and an MBA from Columbia Business School, New York.

Business career

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Mitchell founded, grew and subsequently sold, three international companies in the IT services sector: Standard Chartered Leasing Ltd; United Leasing plc and Syscap plc.

Today his interest is in start-up companies. He is a director of an iPad App start up in Manhattan, called Zuse - a multitasking browser, and he is also chairman of Instant Impact, based in London.

Mitchell formed and chaired the eLearning Foundation (which provides laptops for disadvantaged children); He founded an initiative called Making Connections which enables Israeli and British academics to collaborate on scientific research projects; He chaired the Coexistence Trust whose mission it was to encourage dialogue between Muslim and Jewish students on UK campuses.

Political career

Mitchell was a founder of the Social Democrats in 1981 and twice stood unsuccessfully for Parliament for the party in general elections, at Ealing Acton in the 1983 general election and then at Salisbury in 1987.

Mitchell was ennobled in 2000 and took the Labour whip. He served on the Science and Technology Select Committee. In 2012 he was appointed Shadow Business Minister but resigned in 2013. In July 2013 he was appointed as Labour's Enterprise Adviser. In October 2017 he joined the Cross Benches of the House of Lords.

In a letter to The Guardian he criticised the award of a peerage to Shami Chakrabarti soon after "her anaemic report on antisemitism" in the party "smacks of a reward for preparing the report that the leadership wanted". He pointed to his five-year chairmanship of The Coexistence Trust, which aims to build bridges between Jewish and Muslim students "to deal with the twin evils of antisemitism and Islamophobia on UK campuses", but commented that it was becoming acceptable for Labour affiliated students to use antisemitic epithets without the party doing anything about it. On 24 September 2016, Mitchell resigned from the Labour Party following the re-election of Jeremy Corbyn as party leader. He had previously said he would leave Labour if Corbyn was re-elected and, after the result was announced, said: "I’m a man of my word". According to Lord Mitchell on the BBC's Sunday Politics programme, Corbyn "surrounds himself with a coterie of people who hold violent, violent anti-Israel views and allied with it they are very hostile to Jews so, in my view, they’re pretty bad guys".

Personal life

He is married to Hannah Lowy, a documentary film-maker by profession, who is a Trustee of The Donmar Warehouse Theatre in London and was a board member of Women for Women International for seven years, and later an Emeritus Trustee. Lady Mitchell chairs the family trust (The Lowy Mitchell Foundation) which supports a number of educational charities. They have twin sons.

References

"No. 55847". The London Gazette. 15 May 2000. p. 5315.
"House of Lords Minutes of Proceedings of Wednesday 24 May 2000".
"Starmer's action on antisemitism prompts three peers to rejoin Labour - The Jewish Chronicle".
Mitchell, Parry (8 August 2016). "Shami Chakrabarti's honour under scrutiny". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 September 2016.
Dearden, Lizzie (24 September 2016). "Jewish peer Lord Mitchell set to quit Labour Party in protest over Jeremy Corbyn's re-election as leader". The Independent. Archived from the original on 25 May 2022. Retrieved 24 September 2016.
Dysch, Marcus (25 September 2016). "Jewish peer resigns as Jeremy Corbyn is re-elected Labour leader". The Jewish Chronicle. Retrieved 25 September 2016.
"Lady Hannah Lowy Mitchell". Women for Women. Retrieved 19 September 2021.

External links

Orders of precedence in the United Kingdom
Preceded byThe Lord Hunt of Chesterton	Gentlemen Baron Mitchell	Followed byThe Lord Parekh

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