The former Permanent Secretary at the Department of Finance, Sue Gray, has been appointed as a Life Peer by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.
Sue Gray was one of 30 new members of the House of Lords announced by the Prime Minister this afternoon.
The former Civil Servant gained greater recognition after she was tasked with investigating a series of lock-down parties at 10 Downing Street while Boris Johnson was Prime Minister. After leaving the civil service, she was appointed as Chief of Staff to Sir Keir Starmer and remained in the role until she stood down at the beginning of October stating that she "risked becoming a distraction" following public discourse about her salary.
Following her resignation, the Prime Minister had announced that she would take on the role of Envoy to the Prime Minister for the Nations and Regions before she decided against taking up the role.
Ms Gray was born to Irish immigrants who moved to Tottenham in the early 1950s and following her father's sudden death in 1975, she abandoned her plans to go to university and opted to enter the Civil Service.
At the height of the Troubles, Sue Gray took a career break and ran The Cove Bar in Newry with her country singer husband, Bill Conlon.
After a lengthy career a the Cabinet Office, Sue Gray returned to Northern Ireland in 2018 after she was appointed Permanent Secretary at the Department of Finance.
She later returned to London after she failed to be appointed as the head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, and in a subsequent interview with the BBC she said that she thought perhaps people thought she was "too much of a challenger, or a disrupter".
Earlier this year, her son Liam Conlon, who chairs the Labour Party Irish Society was elected as the MP for Beckingham and Penge.
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