Sir Robert Worcester, founder of MORI (Market and Opinion Research International Ltd) and Chairman of the Magna Carta 800th Anniversary Commemoration Committee will speak about the importance of Magna Carta to our legal system when he delivers the Keith Tucker Memorial Lecture at Kent in October.
The lecture on Wednesday 14 October will be hosted jointly by Kent Law Society and Kent Law School.
Sir Robert is Deputy Chairman of the Magna Carta Trust and is a former Chancellor of the University of Kent (2007-2014). He has been an Honorary Professor of Politics at Kent since 2002. In 2005 he was appointed by Her Majesty the Queen a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE) in recognition of the ‘outstanding services rendered to political, social and economic research and for contribution to government policy and programmes’.
A past President of the World Association for Public Opinion Research, Sir Robert was the winner of the Helen Dinerman Award for career contributions to innovative research and to research methodology in 1996. He is a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and of the Market Research Society of Great Britain and was a Specialist Advisor to the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee.
More locally, Sir Robert is a Deputy Lieutenant of the County of Kent and a Kent County Council appointed Kent Ambassador. He was a Non-Executive Director of Kent Messenger Group and Chairman of Maidstone Radio, CTR 105.4 fm, and was a Non-Executive Director of the Medway Maritime Hospital NHS Trust until 2004.
Amongst many charitable causes he supports, Sir Robert is a Vice President of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, of the United Nations Association and of the European Atlantic Group and was President of ENCAMS (Keep Britain Tidy). He is currently a Vice President and was a Trustee of Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust and was a Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) Trustee. He is a Vice President of Protect Kent, the Kent Branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England. From 1993 to 2010, he was chairman of the Pilgrims Society.
Sir Robert’s talk, ‘Magna Carta and its importance to our Legal System’ is open to the general public. More than 150 attendees are expected, including law students and staff, practitioners, members of the judiciary and civic guests. If you would like to attend, please book your place online (no payment required).
Welcome refreshments will be available in the Grimond Building from 6pm with Sir Robert’s talk beginning at 6.30pm in Grimond Lecture Theatre 1 (GLT1). After a brief opportunity for questions and answers there will be a networking buffet from 7.30pm with the evening closing by 9pm.
The annual memorial lecture was established in 1983, in memory of Keith Tucker, a former Honorary Secretary of Kent Law Society. Previous speakers include Kent alumna Dr Lucy Scott-Moncrieff CBE, a former president of the Law Society and the Director of Public Prosecutions Alison Saunders CB.