She first contested the Parliamentary constituency of
East Fife at the
October 1974 general election.
House of Commons Liddell was first elected to Parliament in 1994, at the closely contested
Monklands East by-election following
John Smith's death. She was appointed a
Privy Councillor on 27 October 1998. She was
Secretary of State for Scotland from 2001 to 2003, a position whose powers had been transferred to the
Scottish Executive after
devolution in 1999. In addition, she angered the monks of
Buckfast Abbey when she called on them to stop selling
Buckfast in
Scotland. She was dubbed
Minister for Monarch of the Glen after several visits to the set of the hit BBC series. raised questions about the relevance of Scottish Secretary's job
post-devolution. The role was abolished as a full-time position in 2003, when the
Scotland Office was rolled into the
Department for Constitutional Affairs. She took up appointment as
British High Commissioner to Australia in the summer of 2005, and was succeeded in the role by
Baroness Amos in October 2009.
House of Lords On 28 May 2010, it was announced in the
Dissolution Honours List that she would be created a
life peer. On 7 July, she took the title
Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke, of Airdrie in the County of Lanarkshire, six days later becoming a member of the
House of Lords. She is a member of
Labour Friends of Israel. In 2010–11 Liddell was a member of the independent Philips inquiry into the
1994 RAF Chinook crash on the
Mull of Kintyre, established by the
Secretary of State for Defence. ==Personal life==