Oriel Provost to serve on UK’s Soft Power Council
Former Chaplain Professor Nigel Biggar nominated to Lords
3 January 2025
Professor Nigel Biggar CBE has joined ten other Orielenses in the House of Lords after being nominated for a peerage.
Lord Biggar was Oriel’s Chaplain from 1990 to 1999. He was Oxford’s Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology, and is one of Britain’s leading centre-Right intellectuals. In 2021, he was appointed to a CBE “for services to Higher Education”.
The Provost, Lord Mendoza CBE, describes Biggar as an “exceptionally deserving nominee” for a peerage.
In a statement Biggar said: “The grant of a peerage marks the culmination of a 40-year journey through academe and the church into British public life. I am deeply grateful to have lived to see the day, and to have the opportunity to contribute my ethical expertise to Parliament’s deliberations, not least about free speech and ‘decolonisation’, and the Conservative Party’s intellectual renewal.”
Thangam Debbonaire has also been nominated to Lords as a Labour peer. In December 2024, she attended a guest night at Oriel at the invitation of the Provost.