David William Kinloch Anderson, Baron Anderson of Ipswich, (born 5 July 1961) is a British barrister and life peer, who was the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation in the United Kingdom between 2011 and 2017. On 8 June 2018 it was announced that he would be introduced to the House of Lords as a cross-bench (non-party) working peer. On the same day he was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE), for services to national security and civil liberties, in the Queen's 2018 Birthday Honours.
Contents
Early life
Anderson's father was Sir Eric Anderson, former headmaster of Eton College, who taught Prince Charles (at Gordonstoun), Tony Blair (at Fettes College) and David Cameron and Boris Johnson at Eton, before moving on to Lincoln College, Oxford, where he was Rector while Rishi Sunak and Shabana Mahmood were undergraduates.
Anderson was educated at the Edinburgh Academy; the Dragon School; CES Jargeau (France); Eton College (where he was a King's Scholar); New College, Oxford (1979–82: Ancient and Modern History); Downing College, Cambridge (1982–84: Law); and the Inns of Court School of Law.
Career
Legal practice
Anderson came to the English Bar after spells in Washington DC (1985–86) as a lawyer from abroad at Covington and Burling and in Brussels (1987–88) in the private office of Lord Cockfield, the European Commissioner tasked with completing the Internal Market.
As a practitioner since 1988 at Brick Court Chambers in London and King's Counsel since 1999, Anderson appeared in more than 150 cases in the Court of Justice of the European Union, including for the claimants in the landmark constitutional cases Factortame (supremacy of EU law:1988-2000) and Kadi (UN/EU terrorist sanctions: 2005–2010). Cases presented in the highest UK courts include ProLife Alliance v BBC (freedom of political speech), Friends of the Earth (Heathrow Airport's appeal in relation to its proposed third runway) and the sanctions case Shvidler. Among more than 30 cases that he has argued before the European Court of Human Rights are Bowman v UK (free speech and election spending), McGonnell v UK (separation of powers), Hatton v UK (night noise and environmental rights), Demopoulos v Turkey (Cyprus property) and Gaunt v UK (journalistic freedom of expression). Cases he has argued for UEFA include the appeal by Crystal Palace to the Court of Arbitration for Sport against its exclusion from the 2025/26 Europa League.
Anderson is a Bencher of Middle Temple. He sat as a Recorder of the Crown Court from 2004 to 2013, and from 2015 to 2024 as a Judge of the Courts of Appeal of Guernsey and Jersey, where he was also the Investigatory Powers Commissioner between 2017 and 2020. Anderson was described as the UK's "Legal Personality of the Year" in 2015, and as one of London's 1000 most influential people in 2017. He was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2025 Chambers UK Bar Awards.
National security
Anderson succeeded Lord Carlile of Berriew CBE QC as the UK's Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation in February 2011. He stepped down after two three-year terms as Independent Reviewer, and was succeeded in post by Max Hill QC on 1 March 2017. All but one of his 20 reports as Independent Reviewer were laid before Parliament and published in full.
Both Government and opposition credited Anderson for his influence on the Justice and Security Act 2013, which governs the use of closed material procedures in UK courts. His reports and evidence to Parliament also influenced the law governing Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (TPIMs, the successors to control orders), which were reformulated in accordance with his recommendations in 2015; the scope of the power to stop and detain travellers under Schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act 2000; and the practice of asset-freezing. Other reports concerned the deprivation of citizenship and the practice of deportation with assurances.
The UK Supreme Court referred to Anderson's work with approval in R v Gul (2013) and Beghal v DPP (2015), as did the European Court of Human Rights in Beghal v UK (2019). He wrote in 2014 and 2017 on the channels by which the Independent Reviewer may hope to influence the law and policy of counter-terrorism. He delivered broader reflections on terrorism and the law in 2013 and in his Hague Lecture of 2018. He lectured on reporting terrorism in 2019.
"A Question of Trust", Anderson's June 2015 report of his Investigatory Powers Review, described the obscurity of the then law as "undemocratic, unnecessary and – in the long run – intolerable". Its 125 recommendations aimed to replace it with "a clear, coherent and accessible scheme, adapted to the world of internet-based communications and encryption". The report was described in an opinion piece by an editor at The Guardian as "the turning point that policymakers have looked for and missed ever since 9/11", and was a blueprint for the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. Following publication of the report, Anderson was shortlisted in 2015 by ISPA for its "Internet Hero of the Year" award.
In August 2016 followed the report of Anderson's Bulk Powers Review, incorporating 60 anonymised case studies, which examined the operational case for the bulk retention of data by MI5, MI6 and GCHQ and is a significant factual resource for debates on "mass surveillance". Both these reports were relied upon by the European Court of Human Rights in its Big Brother Watch judgments of September 2018 and May 2021. Anderson's expert evidence in the Irish High Court on police use of communications data when investigating the murder of Elaine O'Hara was relied upon by the Supreme Court in its Dwyer judgment of February 2020.
House of Lords
Having applied to be a "people's peer", Anderson was nominated for a life peerage by the independent House of Lords Appointments Commission in June 2018. He was created Baron Anderson of Ipswich, of Ipswich in the County of Suffolk, on 10 July, and sits as a cross-bencher. He gave his maiden speech on 19 July 2018 in a debate on the impact of referendums on parliamentary democracy, and began to contribute on issues ranging from national security, internet safety and surveillance to EU-related and constitutional matters. He moved the amendment in July 2019 that limited the Government's scope to prorogue Parliament, and spoke and wrote against the dangers of populism and of a no-deal Brexit. On the national security front, his amendments resulted in changes to the designated area offence and to border security powers in the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019.
In the 2019-2021 and 2021-2022 parliamentary sessions, Anderson tabled or was closely involved in amendments to Bills which became the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 (removal of the clauses providing for unilateral departure from the Northern Ireland Protocol), the Overseas Operations Act 2021 (removal of presumption against prosecution of offences within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court), the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 (creation of a new offence of strangulation or suffocation), the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act 2021 (requirement to notify criminal conduct authorisations to Judicial Commissioners; provision of access to criminal injuries compensation), the Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Act 2021 (criteria for and maximum duration of Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures), the Environment Act 2021 (enlarging judicial remedies available to the Office for Environmental Protection), the Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022 (removal of presumption in favour of suspended or prospective-only quashing orders), and the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 (limitations on the power to remove citizenship without notice; introduction of judicial and administrative safeguards). He was a member from 2019 to 2020 of the EU Justice Sub-Committee of the House of Lords, and from 2020 to 2021 of the EU Security and Justice Sub-Committee. From February 2021 until 2024 he served as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Rule of Law.
In the 2022-23 parliamentary session, Anderson tabled or was closely involved in amendments to Bills which became the National Security Act 2023 (rationalising the primary tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme; removal of intelligence agency immunity, and limitation of a defence for armed services under the Serious Crime Act 2007); the Public Order Act 2023 (limiting and safeguarding the power to impose serious disruption prevention orders); and the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 (seeking to reduce the scope of a broad delegated power to revoke and replace laws by statutory instrument). He opposed a government amendment to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, which would have conferred a broad delegated power to regulate the discharge of nutrients into protected waterways. He served from 2023 until 2026 on the Constitution Committee of the House of Lords, where he participated in the preparation of reports on numerous Bills as well as on the appointment and removal of senior civil servants, voter identification. the governance of the Union and the Rule of Law. He served on the advisory board of the Institute for Government / Bennett Institute Review of the UK Constitution.
Academic and charitable interests
Since 2000 Anderson has at various times been a trustee or a member of the advisory/editorial board of legal and educational institutions including the Centre of European Law at the Dickson Poon School of Law, the British Association for Central and Eastern Europe, the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, the Slynn Foundation, the British Institute of International and Comparative Law and the European Human Rights Law Review. He is the author of two editions of References to the European Court, the second co-written with Marie Demetriou, and of various articles in legal journals including Public Law, New Journal of European Criminal Law, the European Human Rights Law Review and the European Convention of Human Rights Law Review. He has also written for publications including The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Evening Standard, Prospect and The House, and is an occasional book reviewer for the Literary Review. Anderson has been since 1999 a visiting professor at King's College London and is a former General Editor of the OUP's Oxford European Union Law Library. Having lectured widely on EU law and human rights in central and eastern Europe in the decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he was appointed between 2000 and 2004 by the secretary general of the Council of Europe to monitor and report to the Committee of Ministers on the freedom of the media in Russia, Ukraine, Georgia and Turkey.
Recent lectures, some published also in academic or professional journals, include The Fly in the China Shop, The Lords and the Law, National Security Law, Writing a Constitution, National Security and Human Rights, Parliament and the Rule of Law and The ECHR - News from London and Strasbourg.
Since July 2019 Anderson has chaired Inter Mediate, a charity founded by Jonathan Powell which works discreetly at the highest political levels to support complex negotiations and conflict resolution. Anderson also chairs the advisory board of the UCL European Institute. He is a member of the Advisory Council of Transparency International UK and the Council of the cross-party law reform charity, JUSTICE. He was elected in 2024 as an Honorary Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, where he sits on the advisory committee of the Battcock Institute.
Auld Alliance Trophy
A native of Edinburgh, Anderson was the co-promoter, (with Patrick Caublot of Amiens Rugby Club) of the Auld Alliance Trophy. First awarded (to Scotland) in February 2018, and presented every year at the Six Nations rugby international between Scotland and France, the solid silver trophy commemorates the rugby players of both nations who lost their lives in the First World War. It bears the names of Anderson's great-great-uncle Eric Milroy (Scotland's captain in 1914, killed at Delville Wood in July 1916) and of his French counterpart, the aviator Marcel Burgun.