Lourie qualified as a
chartered accountant with Cooper Brothers in 1971 (now
PricewaterhouseCoopers). He was a
Labour Party member of
Westminster City Council (1971–74) and the
Greater London Council member for
Hornchurch (1973–77) where he was chair of scrutiny and vice-chair of finance. He was elected as an
SDP–Liberal Alliance councillor for
Kew on
Richmond upon Thames London Borough Council in 1982, becoming a
Liberal Democrat following the merger of the
Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the
Liberal Party in 1988. In
1990, he was re-elected as a Liberal Democrat. From 1990 and 1994 he chaired the London Boroughs Grants Committee, awarding grants of around £29 million to the
voluntary sector in Greater London. He was a board member of the
London Tourist Board where he deputised for the chairman, Sir
John Egan. He chaired the Independent Panel on members' remuneration for the
Association of Police Authorities and was a member of the
Metropolitan Police Committee. He was a board member of
Richmond Charities and of
Kew Community Trust as well as chairing
Poems in the Waiting Room, a British charity providing poetry cards to
doctors' waiting rooms in
England and Wales. He was a patron of
Cultural Co-operation, a charity that ran world music festivals. In 2015, he was appointed Chairman of the Charity Appeal Committee of
Kingston Hospital to raise £750,000 to improve the treatment of patients with
dementia. ==Personal life==