Human rights commissioners named

Shelagh McCall, John McNeill and Kay Hampton to be members under Professor Alan Miller

News, 8 May 2008

Three part-time members have been appointed to the Scottish Commission of Human Rights.

Shelagh McCall, John McNeill and Professor Kay Hampton join the commission’s chair, Professor Alan Miller, a past president of the Glasgow Bar Association, who was appointed last year.

Shelagh McCall holds degrees from the Universities of Edinburgh (Bachelor of Laws) and Strathclyde (Master of Laws). She began her career as a solicitor in East Lothian, specialising in criminal defence work.

War crimes tribunal

In January 2006, Ms McCall joined the United Nations as a prosecution appeals counsel at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague, where she has been handling appeals in cases of crimes against humanity and war crimes dating from the 1990s conflict. On taking up her appointment with the Commission, she will be returning to Scotland.

John McNeill has extensive experience of criminal justice practices throughout the UK. He has worked as a probation officer and governor in the Northern Ireland Prison Service, as a governor in the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), as chief executive of SACRO and as the depute director/acting director in SPS responsible for regimes and healthcare.

Kay Hampton is currently professor in communities and race relations in the School of Law and Social Sciences at Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU). She lectured in sociology at GCU until 2005 and criminology since then, and is presently seconded to the university’s organisational development department.

She is currently a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission UK and an ambassador for BTCV, a UK environmental organisation.

The commissioners have been appointed for four years and will work an average of 30 days a year. The official opening of the office of the Scottish Commission for Human Rights will be on 20 June in Optima, 58 Robertson Street, Glasgow.