Dame Colette Bowe was the Chair of Ofcom from 2009 to 2014. She gave evidence to the Inquiry on the composition and role of Ofcom. In 2014, she was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire for her services to media and communications.
Member of Parliament from 1992 to 2015, holding major ministerial positions including (from 2001 to 2007) as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Designated a Core Participant Victim at the Inquiry, she gave extensive evidence, based on her experience both as Secretary of State responsible for media and as a victim of phone-hacking. In her evidence, she accused the press of "total invasion" of her privacy. Jowell accepted £200,000 in damages from the News of the World (£100,000 of which went to a charity), after the police informed her that her phone had been comprehensively hacked. Raised to the peerage in the 2015 Dissolution Honours, Baroness Jowell died from cancer in May 2018.
