We have an incredible panel of judges, chosen for their deep knowledge of policy and how it works in
practice, as well as to provide a balanced jury representing politics from across the political spectrum.
David was the Conservative MP for South West Hertfordshire from 2005 to 2019. He served in a variety of Ministerial roles in the Treasury from 2010 to 2017, including as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. He was appointed Secretary of State for Work & Pensions in 2017 and Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor in 2018. Over the course of 2019 he left the Government, the Conservative Party and Parliament. He is now Head of Public Policy at the law firm Macfarlanes, senior adviser to the public affairs firm Instinctif Partners, chair of the negotiation consultancy Negotient and a regular columnist for the New Statesman and ConservativeHome. He recently chaired the Independent Sentencing Review commissioned by the Ministry of Justice.
Katie Lam has been the Member of Parliament for the Weald of Kent since 2024, she is a Shadow Home Office minister and Opposition Assistant Whip. Before Parliament, Katie worked in senior roles in government: in the Home Office, she focused on national security (counter terrorism, MI5 oversight and serious organised crime); and in 10 Downing Street, she served as Deputy Chief of Staff and head of the Prime Minister’s Business Team. She also set up and ran the Office for Talent and the Office for Investment. Katie spent the rest of her career in the private sector. She was Chief of Staff at AI company Faculty, one of the UK’s fastest growing tech businesses, and before that spent the bulk of her career at Goldman Sachs, first in equity research, and later leading teams running various projects, analysis and operations internally.
Scottish broadcaster, journalist and political commentator. Presenter of drive time on Times Radio and co-host of popular podcast The Power Test.
Polly Mackenzie is the Chief Social Purpose Officer at The University of the Arts, London. Formerly Director of Policy to the Deputy Prime Minister from 2010-2015. Previous civil society roles include founding CEO of the Money & Mental Health Policy Institute and establishing the operations of the Women’s Equality Party. Polly is also the host of The Times’ How to win an election podcast.
Kanishka is the Labour MP for the Vale of Glamorgan, after a career bridging public service, technology and finance, working in roles across Silicon Valley, the civil service and the city. In government, Kanishka advised ministers on domestic public policy, as Senior Adviser at the Cabinet Office and as Expert Adviser to Britain’s Environment Secretary. He also advised the Labour Party frontbench as Head of Tech Policy. In business, Kanishka advised and invested in climate and fintech start-ups across Europe and the US, and previously advised FTSE boards, sovereign finance ministries and start-up founders at Lazard.
Mark is the Group Public Affairs and Policy Director at Lloyds Banking Group. Mark spent most of his career in the UK civil service, holding senior roles across government. From 2019 to 2022 he was Director General, Economic and Domestic Secretariat in the Cabinet Office, running Cabinet, advising the PM across economic and domestic policy and overseeing government’s legislative programme. Mark’s other roles include Director General, Policy at the Ministry of Justice, Constitution Director at the Cabinet Office and five years in the Political Directorate in the Northern Ireland Office working on implementation of the Good Friday Agreement.
Rachel Wolf is CEO of Public First, a public policy, economics, and opinion consultancy. She was the co-author of the 2019 Conservative manifesto, an adviser to the Prime Minister on Skills and Innovation, and a policy adviser to the Conservative Party. She also founded and ran the New Schools Network, a school reform organisation.
Yuan Yang is the Member of Parliament for Earley and Woodley, a new constituency in Reading which also covers Sonning, Shinfield and Whitley. She is an economist by training, and after her master’s degree, founded Rethinking Economics, a charity that campaigns to make economics teaching more relevant to the real world. Before being selected by the Labour Party to stand for Parliament, she spent eight years working as a journalist at the Financial Times, where she was previously FT Europe-China correspondent, and before that their Beijing deputy bureau chief. Since entering Parliament, Yuan has been elected as a member of the Treasury Select Committee and as Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Social Science and Policy.