Children Ruth Chan, Stehen Chan Spouse Irene Chee (m. 1965) Religion Christian Education Raffles Institution | Name Michael Baron Political party Crossbencher Role Physician | |
Occupation physician and politician Died January 21, 2006, Liverpool, United Kingdom | ||
Michael Chew Koon Chan, Baron Chan 曾秋坤, MBE (6 March 1940 – 21 January 2006) was a Singaporean–British physician and politician, of Chinese descent.
Chan was born in Singapore, where his family were members of the Christian minority. He was educated at Raffles Institution, and moved to the United Kingdom to study medicine at Guy's Hospital Medical School. He trained as a paediatrician, specialising in blood diseases. He returned to Singapore after his studies, becoming a lecturer and consultant paediatrician at the University of Singapore, but returned to the UK in 1974 to study Von Willebrand's disease at the University of London Institute of Child Health at Great Ormond Street Hospital. He moved to the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in 1976, where he remained until 1994 as a senior clinical lecturer and consultant paediatrician. He was director of the NHS Ethnic Health Unit in Leeds between 1994 and 1997, and was successively director of two NHS primary health trusts from 1999.
He was also active in the field of race relations, serving as an advisor to the Home Secretary and then as a Commissioner for the Commission for Racial Equality between 1990 and 1995, and as a member of the Sentencing Panel from 1999. He became a member of the Press Complaints Commission in 2002, and he was chairman of the Chinese in Britain Forum. He was a committed Christian and elder of the Liverpool Chinese Gospel Church, undertaking various charitable works, for which he was appointed MBE in 1991.
He was made a life peer in 2001, becoming Baron Chan, of Oxton in the County of Merseyside, chosen as a "People's Peer". He sat as a crossbencher. He became the second person of Chinese descent to take a seat in either of the Houses of Parliament, after Baroness Dunn. Chan is survived by his wife Irene Wei-Len Chee, his son, Stephen, and daughter, Ruth.
Since Chan's death, Lord Wei has been the only ethnic Chinese Peer in the House of Lords, as Baroness Dunn gave up her seat in the Lords in order to retain her non-domiciled tax status following the passing of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010.