76 Facts About David Lammy

David Lindon Lammy was born on 19 July 1972 and is a British politician who has served as Foreign Secretary since July 2024.

David Lammy studied law at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and was called to the bar in 1994.

David Lammy later studied for a Master of Laws degree at Harvard University, becoming the first black Briton to study at Harvard Law School.

In 2000, David Lammy briefly served in the London Assembly before being elected to Parliament in the 2000 Tottenham by-election.

David Lammy was promoted to Minister of State for Culture in 2005.

In 2007, Gordon Brown appointed him Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills before David Lammy served as Minister of State for Higher Education from 2008 to 2010.

David Lammy then spent the next decade on the backbenches, and was a candidate in the 2015 London Labour Party mayoral selection but ultimately finished fourth.

David Lammy endorsed Keir Starmer in the 2020 Labour leadership election and was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and Shadow Lord Chancellor in Starmer's Shadow Cabinet.

David Lammy has supported Ukraine in its war against Russia and Israel in its war against Hamas.

David Lammy has spoken about the importance of fathers and the need to support them in seeking to be active in the lives of their children.

David Lammy grew up in Tottenham, and went to Downhills Primary School.

David Lammy studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, graduating with a 2:1 in law.

David Lammy was called to the bar of England and Wales in 1994 at Lincoln's Inn.

David Lammy went on to study at Harvard University, where he became the first black Briton to attend Harvard Law School; he studied for a Master of Laws degree and graduated in 1997.

David Lammy is a visiting professor of practice at SOAS.

In May 2000, David Lammy was elected for Labour on the London-wide list to the London Assembly.

In 2003, David Lammy was appointed by Blair as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Constitutional Affairs and while a member of the Government, voted in favour of authorisation for Britain to invade Iraq in 2003.

In 2012, David Lammy pledged his support to Ken Livingstone's bid to become the Labour London mayoral candidate in the 2012 London mayoral election, declaring him "London's Mayor in waiting".

In 2014, David Lammy announced that he was considering entering the race to become Mayor of London in the 2016 election.

On 4 September 2014, David Lammy announced his intention to seek the Labour nomination for the 2016 mayoral election.

David Lammy apologised "unreservedly" for breach of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003.

David Lammy endorsed Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner in the 2020 Labour leadership and deputy leadership elections.

David Lammy apologised in a letter to Parliamentary Standards Commissioner Kathryn Stone.

On 19 November 2023, David Lammy visited Israel and had a meeting with Israeli president Isaac Herzog and Foreign Minister Eli Cohen.

That month, David Lammy said an Israeli strike on a refugee camp could be "legally justified".

In January 2023, David Lammy visited Northern Ireland with Shadow Secretary Peter Kyle and Shadow Cabinet Office Minister Jenny Chapman, visiting Foyle Port to make a statement on the Northern Ireland Protocol.

David Lammy was appointed foreign secretary by Starmer in his ministry on 5 July 2024.

David Lammy took his first international trip as foreign secretary meeting his counterparts in Poland, Germany and Sweden.

David Lammy stated that the UK government wanted to "reset" its relations with the European Union, with their plans including a new joint security pact covering defence, energy policies, the climate crisis, pandemic prevention and illegal immigration.

On 13 July 2024 David Lammy condemned the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Pennsylvania.

David Lammy had previously been critical of Donald Trump, calling him "a tyrant" and "a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath" in 2018.

On 14 July 2024, David Lammy visited Israel and met with the families of Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip.

David Lammy called for a ceasefire in Gaza that would be conditional on the release of all hostages.

On 19 September 2024, David Lammy sparked a diplomatic row with Armenia because of a reference to Nagorno Kharabakh conflict in his blog post.

David Lammy furthermore stated that the status of the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar were "non-negotiable".

In November 2024, following the issuance by the International Criminal Court on an arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged war crimes in Gaza, David Lammy clarified that he considered there to be no discretion for him but to implement the warrant.

David Lammy's position contrasted with France's view that Netanyahu benefited from immunity from the ICC.

On 17 March 2025, in response to questions asked of him in the House of Commons, David Lammy twice stated that Israel's 16-day blockade of humanitarian supplies into Gaza was a "breach" of international law.

On 18 March 2025, David Lammy told Bloomberg it was a "matter for the court" to decide if Israel had breached international law.

David Lammy has talked about black and minority ethnic people, in particular younger people, with regards to their relation with crime and how they are treated by the criminal justice system.

On 11 August 2011, in an address to Parliament, David Lammy attributed part of the cause for England's riots of a few days earlier to destructive "cultures" that had emerged under the prevailing policies.

David Lammy stated that legislation restricting the degree of violence that parents are allowed to use when disciplining their children was partly to blame for current youth culture, that had contributed to the riots.

In September 2017 David Lammy stated that the criminal justice system deals with "disproportionate numbers" of young people from black and ethnic minority communities: despite saying that although decisions to charge were "broadly proportionate", he asserted that black and ethnic minority people still face and perceive bias.

David Lammy said that young black people are nine times more likely to be incarcerated than "comparable" white people, and proposed a number of measures including a system of "deferred prosecution" for young first time offenders to reduce incarcerations.

David Lammy has claimed that black and ethnic minority people offend "at the same rates" as comparable white people "when taking age and socioeconomic status into account"; however, they were more likely to be stopped and searched, if charged, more likely to be convicted, more likely to be sent to prison and less likely to get support in prison.

In 2018, David Lammy blamed the then-Prime Minister Theresa May, Home Secretary Amber Rudd, and London Mayor Sadiq Khan for failing to take responsibility over fatal stabbings in London.

David Lammy criticised inequality, high youth unemployment among black males, and local authorities cutting youth services and outreach programmes.

David Lammy has criticised the University of Oxford for admitting relatively few black students and students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

David Lammy believes the Windrush scandal concerns injustice to a generation who are British, have made their homes and worked in Britain and deserve to be treated better.

On 5 February 2013, David Lammy gave a speech in the House of Commons on why he would be voting in favour of the Marriage Bill, critically comparing the relegation of British same-sex couples to civil partnerships to the "separate but equal" legal doctrine that justified Jim Crow laws in the 20th-century United States.

David Lammy published his report in September 2017, concluding that prosecutions against some BAME suspects should be delayed or dropped outright to mitigate racial bias.

David Lammy has spoken out against antisemitism within the Labour Party, and attended an Enough is Enough rally.

At the rally, David Lammy stated that antisemitism has "come back because extremism has come back" and is damaging support for Labour among Britain's Jewish community.

In January 2019, David Lammy described Rod Liddle having a column in a weekly newspaper as a "national disgrace" and accused Liddle of having "white middle class privilege" for expressing the view that absent fathers played a role in violent crime involving black youths.

David Lammy recorded a Channel 4 documentary for Remembrance Sunday called The Unremembered: Britain's Forgotten War Heroes, which was broadcast on 10 November 2019.

David Lammy, who was critical to bringing the matter to light, called this a "watershed moment".

In October 2022, David Lammy called for a full investigation into an alleged security breach by Suella Braverman.

David Lammy is a staunch advocate of British membership of the European Union.

In 2017, David Lammy said the Rohingya people in Myanmar "are facing genocide".

In late 2023, following an IDF bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp, David Lammy commented that the strike was wrong "when it comes to the ethics," but that "if there is a military objective it can be legally justifiable".

David Lammy has stressed wanting to maintain a strong relationship with the United States.

David Lammy wrote in a Substack post in September 2024 that "Azerbaijan has been able to liberate territory it lost in the early 1990s" in reference to the 2023 Azerbaijani offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, which resulted in the exodus of the Armenian population.

David Lammy described the Grenfell Tower fire as "corporate manslaughter" and called for arrests to be made; his friend Khadija Saye died in the fire.

David Lammy criticised the authorities for failing to say how many people had died.

David Lammy has written about what he believes to be the shortcomings of the housing market.

David Lammy supports shared parental leave, which he maintains would "normalise" fathers being an equal parent with the mother, and would mean they become more involved in the raising of children, arguing that the barriers to "fathers playing a deeper role in family life" are not just legislative, but cultural.

David Lammy has called former Conservative Party Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher a "visionary leader for the UK" and that, "You can take issue with Mrs Thatcher's prescription, but she had a big manifesto for change and set about a course that lasted for over two decades".

In 2017, writing in The Guardian, David Lammy argued that Comic Relief perpetuated problematic stereotypes of Africa, and that they had a responsibility to use its powerful position to move the debate on in a more constructive way by establishing an image of African people as equals.

In February 2019, David Lammy criticised Stacey Dooley for photographs she posted on social media of her trip to Uganda for Comic Relief, and said that "the world does not need any more white saviours", and that she was "perpetuating 'tired and unhelpful stereotypes' about Africa".

David Lammy stated however, that he does not question her "good motives".

David Lammy responded to criticism with a statement in which he referred to the decline in donations being due to contributing factors of austerity, declining viewing figures, trends in the charity sector and format fatigue and that he hoped his comments "would inspire the charity to refresh its image and think harder about the effects its output has on our perceptions of Africa".

David Lammy married the artist Nicola Green in 2005; the couple have two sons and a daughter.

David Lammy is an Anglican and is part of the liberal Anglo-Catholic tradition in the Church of England.

David Lammy holds dual citizenship in the United Kingdom and Guyana.

David Lammy's great-grandmother was Indian, from Calcutta, who moved to Guyana as a labourer as part of the Indian indenture system.

David Lammy was a stand-in presenter on LBC and hosted a weekly Sunday show, from 10 am to 1 pm, between 2022 and April 2024.