Please send us your questions for Baroness Ruth Lister

The renowned social scientist and Labour Peer is ready to answer your questions about poverty and social security in the UK

Fair Comment is taking a break over the summer. But while we’re away, we invite you to send in your questions to given over to Baroness Ruth Lister, the renowned social scientist and Labour Peer (and member of our expert contributors network).

Please submit your questions - about poverty and social security in the UK - to Ruth by Sunday 20 August, for her to answer in an edition of Fair Comment to be published in early September.

Here’s some background on Ruth:

Baroness Ruth Lister CBE is Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at Loughborough University. From 1971 to 1987 Ruth worked for the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), the last eight years as director. She joined the Department of Social Sciences at Loughborough University after six years as Professor and Head of Department of Applied Social Studies, Bradford University. Between 2005 and 2007 she spent some time at the University of Glasgow as the first Donald Dewar Visiting Professor of Social Justice. She retired in October 2010 and joined the House of Lords as a Labour peer in February 2011. She was elected honorary president of CPAG in December 2010.  In the Lords she has sat on the Joint Committee of Human Rights and the Select Committee on Citizenship and Civic Engagement and is an officer of a number of all party parliamentary groups including those on poverty, universal credit, carers, refugees and migration.  She is currently a patron of JustFair and of the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens and is vice chair of Compass and a member of the board of the High Pay Centre.  She served on the Commission on Social Justice, the Opsahl Commission into the Future of Northern Ireland, the Commission on Poverty, Participation and Power, the Fabian Commission on Life Chances and Child Poverty and the National Equality Panel. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2009 and received a life-time achievement award from the Social Policy Association in 2010. She has received honorary doctorates from a number of universities, most recently the University of Oxford. She has published widely on poverty and inequality, social security, gender and citizenship. Her most recent publication is the 2nd edn of Poverty (Polity, 2021).

You can submit your question using our online form. Thanks in advance - we look forward to hearing from you!