Lord David Alton was elected and joined the Liverpool City Council as the Britain’s youngest City Councilor in 1972. He also became the youngest member of the House of Commons in 1979 and, in 1997, was named the Life Peer of the House of Lords. He was made a life peer as Baron Alton of Liverpool, of Mossley Hill in the County of Merseyside, and as a personal choice of John Major in the Dissolution Honours, and took his seat in the House of Lords as a crossbencher.

Lord Alton is the chairman of the British-DPRK All-Party Parliamentary Group, and visited Pyongyang in October 2010 when he had talks with leaders of the North Korean government including Choe Thae Bok, who is the chairman of the Supreme People’s Assembly, the country’s rubber-stamp parliament. Lord Alton established the successful lobby group for human rights, Jubilee Campaign, in 1987, with the support of numerous members of parliament.

Since then, he also co-founded Jubilee Action, a children’s charity established to fulfill the humanitarian needs highlighted by the work of Jubilee Campaign. He has continued to host the Roscoe Lecture Series; has travelled to, and produced reports about, the situation in Tibet, North Korea and Southern Sudan. His following visit to India raised the plight of India’s Dalits. In recognition of his work for human rights and religious liberty, he became a Knight Commander of St. Gregory in 2006.