Kate Green was elected MP for Stretford and Urmston in May 2010. She is currently shadow spokesperson for Equalities.
Prior to her election Kate was Chief Executive of the Child Poverty Action Group, and before that Director of the National Council for One Parent Families (now Gingerbread). She is a long standing campaigner against poverty and inequality,  chairs the all-party parliamentary group on poverty, and serves as a member of the Greater Manchester Poverty Commission. Kate was previously a member of the National Employment Panel which advised Ministers on labour market policies, and Chair of the London Child Poverty Commission, reporting to the Mayor of London and local councillors.

Kate also served as a magistrate for 16 years, and takes a particular interest in the experience of women in the penal system, and how best to rehabilitate them to prevent reoffending.

Baroness Ruth Lister CBE is Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at Loughborough University and a Labour peer.  She is a former Director of the Child Poverty Action Group and is now its Honorary President.  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 is a founding Academician of the Academy for Learned Societies for the Social Sciences and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2009.  She received a lifetime achievement award from the Social Policy Association in 2010.

She has published widely around poverty and social exclusion, welfare state reform, gender and citizenship.  Her books include Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives (2nd ed. Palgrave, 2003); Poverty (Polity Press, 2004); Gendering Citizenship in Western Europe (with F. Williams and others, The Policy Press, 2007) and Understanding Theories and Concepts in Social Policy (The Policy Press, 2010).

Courtenay Barklem is an Associate at McCue and Partners. He previously worked as the Human Rights Adviser at the Law Society of England and Wales. He is a qualified lawyer in England and Wales (solicitor-advocate) and California (attorney). He originally specialised in international construction law for several years before moving into the human rights field. He initially made the cross-over working pro bono on death penalty cases in the US and Caribbean, including an FCO-funded 6-month placement in South Carolina.  In 2002, he represented one of the joint applicants in Hilaire, Constantine and Benjamin et al. v. Trinidad and Tobago in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. He later continued his transition acting as an honorary legal adviser at Citizens Advice Bureaux and representing clients in employment tribunals both pro bono and as part of his practice.
Since 2007, his work has been policy-based.  On the domestic level regularly submits briefings and evidence to parliament and government on human rights issues in relation to consultations and law reform.  Most recently, he has worked on submissions or given evidence regarding extradition, control orders, reform of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the UK’s enforcement of ECtHR judgments.  Internationally,  his work has been focused on protection of human rights defenders (especially lawyers) and the enforcement of human rights judgments in key jurisdictions around the world.  He has also recently contributed to an international project assessing the treatment of children with disabilities in the legal system of selected African countries.  His project work at the Law Society on reform of or building the capacity of the legal sector in other jurisdictions has brought him into regular contact with the Millenium Development Goals and key development agencies.  “This ignited his interest in the right to development and the UN concept of “legal empowerment of the poor” and the overlap with ESC rights. Courtenay has an LLM in human rights law from Birkbeck College, University of London. Courtenay is also a member of the executive committee of the Human Rights Lawyers Association and the Lawyers’ Advisory Committee of Peace Brigades International.

Aoife Nolan is a Professor of International Human Rights Law at Nottingham University Law School. She has published extensively in the areas of human rights, particularly in relation to economic and social rights and children’s rights, as well as on constitutional law.

She has worked with and acted as an expert advisor to a wide range of international and national organisations and bodies working on human rights issues, including the Council of Europe, ESCR-Net, the Northern Ireland Bill of Rights Forum and the International NGO Coalition for an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

From 2008-2010, she co-managed a project on ‘Budget Analysis and the Advancement of Economic and Social Rights in Northern Ireland’ based at the School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast. Her monograph, ‘Children’s Socio-economic Rights, Democracy and the Courts’ was published by Hart in September 2011.

Alice Donald is Senior Research Fellow in the Human Rights and Social Justice Research Institute at London Metropolitan University. She has substantial experience of researching, writing and speaking about human rights issues as they arise both in and outside the UK. Her recent reports have focused on the implementation and future development of human rights legislation in the UK (for the Equality and Human Rights Commission) and on how human rights have been used to develop new conceptions of poverty and new approaches to tackling it (for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation). She is organiser of a public seminar series in 2011 on ‘human rights and social justice in an age of austerity’.

Alice was formerly an Associate of Global Partners & Associates. She also has experience of working in and with media and civil society, particularly in South-east Asia. She spent 15 years in the BBC World Service, as a broadcast journalist, journalism trainer and programme editor specialising in East Asian affairs and, latterly, in a senior commissioning role. 

Alice has a First Class honours degree in History from Cambridge University and an MSc (with Distinction) in Human Rights from the London School of Economics.

Jamie Burton is co-founder and Chair of Just Fair. He is a public lawyer with expertise in judicial review. His main areas of practise are human rights, social and clinical care, housing, social security, criminal justice and environmental law. He has acted in many cases concerning the provision of support and/or accommodation to vulnerable groups in society and has a thorough understanding of both central and local government’s responsibilities in all areas of the welfare state. He regularly advises on NHS continuing care, clinical provision, community care (including charging), clinical provision, children services, welfare benefits, homelessness, housing allocations and asylum support.

Recently Jamie spent six months working on welfare and environmental issues in India. He was involved in a group action concerning the largest anti-poverty scheme in the world (“the Right to Food”) and assisted in various claims relating to environmental damage caused by mining in south India.

For many years Jamie has presented seminars and given lectures on human rights law and judicial review and is an experienced public speaker. He has written on human rights, public and housing law. Academically Jamie is interested in achieving a greater understanding and recognition of economic and social rights in domestic jurisprudence. Jamie is a member of the Housing Lawyers Practitioner’s Association, ALBA, Environmental Law Foundation and the Critical Legal Group.

Jonathan is co-founder and Director of Just Fair. He has a passion for social justice, solidarity and human rights. He regularly collaborates with individuals, communities and NGOs to advance ESC Rights. For example, he currently acts as a Trustee to the Pavement, the free magazine for homeless people in London and Scotland. Jonathan recently acted as an Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR) Consultant for Age UK on their ‘Older People and Human Rights Project’ which aims to empower disadvantaged older people to use human rights to influence decisions affecting their lives and wider public policy. Jonathan previously acted as an ESCR consultant for Democratic Audit and as an advisor to the British Institute of Human Rights on their ‘Human Rights in the Community’ project which aimed to empower individuals and communities with human rights language and tools.

Jonathan worked for several years as a Public Law Teaching Fellow at University College London (UCL), and a Guest Teacher at London School of Economics (LSE). In his student days Jonathan co-founded, and was President of, the UCL Student Human Rights Programme (UCLSHRP). The UCLSHRP is a student lead human rights organisation which seeks to foster a vibrant culture of human rights within UCL and wider communities by initiating awareness, instigating debate and inspiring action. (For further information see: http://www.uclshrp.com.) Jonathan has presented seminars, published articles and given lectures on human rights law. He read law at Undergraduate and Master’s level, specialising in human rights and international law. He is also a barrister (non-practising).