Baroness Mary Warnock is Patron of the Progress Educational Trust (PET), and is a Crossbench Peer in the House of Lords. Testament to the impact she has had on public policy is the fact that 25 years after she chaired the Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilisation and Embryology, the UK still abides by its recommendations. This committee's 1984 report (.pdf 769KB), often referred to simply as the Warnock Report, is perhaps the world's most influential analysis of the ethics of assisted conception and embryo research. Baroness Warnock also chaired the Committee of Enquiry into the Education of Handicapped Children and Young People, which in 1978 published the influential report Special Educational Needs.

Baroness Warnock was educated at St Swithun's School and at Lady Margaret Hall at the University of Oxford. Her undergraduate career was interrupted by two years of teaching classics during the Second World War, and education has remained her great interest ever since. She went on to become a Fellow in Philosophy at St Hugh's College in Oxford, Headmistress of Oxford High School, a member of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (now subsumed into Ofcom), Mistress of Girton College at the University of Cambridge, Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College, and Patron of the Iris Project. She is author of numerous books, including Making Babies: Is There a Right to Have Children? (buy this book from Amazon UK or Amazon USA) and Nature and Mortality (buy this book from Amazon UK or Amazon USA).