Attorney-General caught by own law

BRITAIN: Her story is a history of firsts: in 1991 she was the first black woman to be made a QC and, at 35, the youngest Queen's Counsel since William Pitt the Younger.

She became the first black female government minister in 1999 and the first woman and black person to be appointed Attorney-General since the post was created in 1315.

And then came a record of another kind: the first chief lawyer to be fined for breaking a law she had helped to bring in as a Home Office minister.

Until last September Baroness Scotland had a fairly low profile. Little was known about the country's chief law officer and she seemed content to keep it that way, as it enabled her to quietly and modestly go about her work.

But that all changed when it emerged that she had mistakenly employed an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper and was fined £5000 ($10,800).

Housekeeper Loloahi Tapui, from Tonga, claims that Baroness Scotland did not look at her passport before giving her the job, something the Attorney-General has insisted she did.

The pair look set to face each other in court next month when Tapui goes on trial for fraud and Scotland appears as a prosecution witness.

Since the scandal the 54-year-old Attorney-General has been keeping a low profile.

Born Patricia Scotland in Dominica in 1955, the 10th of 12 children, Scotland did not seem destined for a political career. She came to Britain when she was 2 and grew up and attended state schools in Walthamstow, East London.

After co-founding a successful legal chambers she looked set to become a High Court judge until then-Prime Minister Tony Blair made her a Labour peer, Baroness Scotland of Asthal, after the Oxfordshire village where she has a home.

Two years later she made history as the first black woman to serve as a government minister. She served at the Foreign Office and the now defunct Lord Chancellor's Office, followed by a stint as a Home Office Minister before Gordon Brown made her Attorney-General in 2007.

She hopes to soon be able to put the housekeeper scandal behind her and get back to championing the issues close to her heart particularly domestic violence, an issue that she works tirelessly on during her time in government.

- INDEPENDENT