Professor Sir Ian Kennedy

Professor Sir Ian Kennedy LLD is a lawyer who, for the past few decades, has lectured and written on the law and the ethics of healthcare. He is Chair of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, the new and independent body providing rigorous scrutiny of the allowances scheme for Members of Parliament. He is also Emeritus Professor of Health Law, Ethics and Policy at the School of Public Policy, University College of London and Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics.

He was Chairman of the Healthcare Commission from its creation until 2009, when it was merged with other regulatory bodies to form the Care Quality Commission. He also chaired the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. He is a former Dean of the Law School (1986-96) at King’s College London and President of the Centre of Medical Laws and Ethics, which he founded in 1978. He gave the Reith Lectures in 1980. He was a member of the GMC for nine years and has been a member of the Medicines Commission and the Department of Health’s advisory group on AIDS, Chairman of the public inquiry (1998 – 2001) into paediatric cardiac surgery at Bristol, a government inquiry (1997), into xenotransplantation (the use of animal-to-human transplants), and an inquiry (1998) that recommended changing the law relating to quarantine for animals being brought into the UK from abroad.

He is a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) (2002) and was awarded an Honorary DSc by the University of Glasgow in July 2003. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners (2002), Royal College of Physicians (2003), Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (2004), Royal College of Anaesthetists (2004) and Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (2005). He was Knighted for services to medical law and bioethics in 2002.