Former MP Victoria Prentis is given a life peerage in Rishi Sunak's resignation honours

Mrs Prentis – who will become Baroness Prentis - is currently helping to train Ukrainian lawyers to prosecute war crimes cases, said it was a ‘huge privilege’ to have been elevated to the House of Lords.

“It is a huge privilege to have been recognised in the former Prime Minister's resignation honours,” she said.

"In the Lords, I hope to focus on my areas of interest: the law and the countryside and to continue to support justice for Ukraine.”

Mrs Prentis was one of seven people nominated by Rishi Sunak to receive life peerages, meaning they can vote in the House of Lords.

Former education and housing secretary Michael Gove, former transport secretary Mark Harper, Simon Hart, Sir Alister Jack, Stephen Massey and Eleanor Shawcross will also be given life peerages.

There were 29 other honours bestowed. Former England cricketer James Anderson, former chancellor Jeremy Hunt and former foreign secretary James Cleverly were among those awarded knighthoods.

Victoria Prentis was elected as Conservative MP for the Banbury constituency in 2015, following the retirement of Tony Baldry, now Sir Tony Baldry. She was Attorney General from October 2022 to July 2024 and was previously Minister of State at the Department for Work and Pensions from (September 2022 to October 2022).

From September 2021 – September 2022, she was Minister of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and before that, she was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at DEFRA from February 2020 to September 2021.

She was responsible for food during the Covid pandemic and steered through the legislation which made the greatest environmental changes for seventy years.

Mrs Prentis served on the Justice Select Committee from 2015 to 2019, the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments from 2015 to 2017, and as a lay member on the Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art from 2019.

She also served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Attorney General from 2019 to 2020, to the Leader of the House of Commons from 2017 to 2019, and to Junior Ministers at the Department for Transport from 2016 to 2017.

For seventeen years Mrs Prentis was a lawyer for the Treasury Solicitors’ Department and headed up the government’s Justice and Security team. Her responsibilities included providing advice on military, prisons and national security matters and representing the government in court. Called to the Bar in 1995, she practised at the Treasury Solicitor’s Department (now the Government Legal Department) from 1997 to 2014. She took a number of cases to the Supreme Court and represented parties in public inquires. She has worked on many of the major judicial review cases of the last thirty years.

Sean Woodcock became the new Labour MP for Banbury in July 2024, making him the first non-Conservative MP since the First World War. His election followed boundary changes that meant Bicester was no longer part of the constituency, while Chipping Norton was included.