Janet Young, Baroness Young

Janet Mary Young, Baroness Young, ( Baker, 23 October 1926 – 6 September 2002) was a British Conservative Party politician. She served as the first ever female Leader of the House of Lords from 1981 to 1983, first as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and from 1982 as Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal. She was the only woman ever appointed to the Cabinet by Margaret Thatcher.

Early life Born Janet Mary Baker in Widnes in 1926, she was the daughter of J. N. L. Baker, a geographer at Oxford University, and Phyllis (née Hancock) Baker. She went to the mainly boys Dragon School in Oxford where she played rugby and cricket, and then to Headington School.

Political career Young became a councillor for Oxford City Council in 1957 and was leader by 1967. and was raised to the peerage on 24 May 1971 as Baroness Young, of Farnworth in the County Palatine of Lancaster. She became a government whip shortly after appointment and was subsequently promoted to minister of state in the Department for Education. She joined the Cabinet on 15 September 1981, when she was appointed to be the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. On 13 April 1982, she was appointed to be the Leader of the House of Lords and the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, posts which she kept for only 14 months, until 11 June 1983. Thatcher thought that Young "was perhaps too consistent an advocate of caution on all occasions" and was not an effective leader in the Lords. She worked to try to stop legislation going through that would allow unmarried couples (including gay men and women) to adopt children, and also fought the repeal of Section 28.

Following her death, gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell opined that she had "poisoned society with prejudice and intolerance [...] future historians will rank her alongside the defenders of apartheid. She supported homophobic discrimination to the last."