Stephen Lander

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Stephen Lander
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Sir Stephen Lander is the former Chair of the Serious Organised Crime Agency.[1]

Lander served for 25 years in the Security Service MI5, serving as Director-General from 1996 to 2002.[2]

Education and Academic Career

Lander was a pupil at Bishop's Stortford College, which had previously produced MI5 officers including Peter Wright and Director-General, Sir Dick White.[3]

Lander took a BA in History at Queen's College, Cambridge. he then took a PH.D, writing a dissertation on the diocese of Chichester in the reformation which won him a post-doctoral post at the Institute of Historical Research in London.[4]

MI5

Lander joined MI5 in 1975.[3]

F5 Section

Lander served in the F5 section in around 1981. He was struck by the caution of senior officers such as Director-General Sir John Jones and his deputy, in contrast to the ambitious younger officers in the Irish Joint Section Belfast station.[5]

B 2 Section

Lander was serving as Deputy head of the MI5 B Branch|B2 section]] in autumn 1985, when he proposed ending the traditional practice of placing new MI5 officers in F2 Section to learn the basics of counter-subversion work. This was strongly opposed by Director F.[3]

Director T Branch

Lander had been Director T for two years when Stella Rimington became Director General. She did not initially think of him as her natural successor, although by 1995, the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, Sir Richard Wilson, had concluded from Lander was her first choice from his attendance in meetings.[3]

Director-General

Lander succeeded Rimington as Director-General in April 1996, at a time when the end of the IRA ceasefire two months earlier had dampened fears of a cut in MI5's budget.[6]

Lander's experience in Northern Ireland was a key factor in his appointment. He was the first MI5 Director-General not to have been a Deputy Director General (DDG), and one of the two DDGs had been a rival candidate.[3]

SOCA

The Guardian reported in 2006 that Lander retained a number of directorships in the security industry following his SOCA appointment:

Sir Stephen Lander, the head of Britain's elite crime-busting squad, is a paid director of a company that has IT contracts with every police force in the UK. He is also on the board of a second firm whose parent company has IT contracts with other law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Since taking up his post as chairman of the serious organised crime agency in September 2004, Sir Stephen, 58, has remained as a non-executive director of Northgate Information Solutions and StreamShield Networks, with a total remuneration of £60,000. As head of Soca his starting salary was £75,000.[7]

Notes

  1. SOCA's Governance, Serious Organised Crime Agency, accessed 30 June 2009.
  2. Press Association, Blunkett appoints former MI5 Chief, guardian.co.uk,13 August 2004.
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Christopher Andrew, Defence of the Realm, The Authorized History of MI5, Allen Lane, 2009, p.789.
  4. Christopher Andrew, Defence of the Realm, The Authorized History of MI5, Allen Lane, 2009, p.561.
  5. Christopher Andrew, Defence of the Realm, The Authorized History of MI5, Allen Lane, 2009, p.696.
  6. Christopher Andrew, Defence of the Realm, The Authorized History of MI5, Allen Lane, 2009, p.788.
  7. David Pallister, Crime squad chief's links to IT firm are revealed, The Guardian, 12 June 2006.