Tributes have been paid to charity lawyer and “formidable supporter of the sector” Andrew Phillips, after his death earlier this month.

Phillips, a former Liberal Democrat peer and founder of Bates Wells, died peacefully on 9 April after a short illness, with his family at his side.

Last week, tributes were paid to Phillips at a meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Charities and Volunteering.

Labour peer Baroness Pitkeathley said Phillips’ passing was “a very sad loss to us all”.

“Andrew helped me negotiate two mergers in my professional life. I still bear the scars on my back from those mergers, but they are much less than they would have been had Andrew not been there to help me,” she said.

“And so valued was he that he was known in my office as ‘the blessed Andrew’ and I once found one of my rather young members of staff addressing an envelope to him thinking that he was a cleric, saying: ‘To the blessed Andrew Phillips…’.

“That is always something that remains in my mind about dear Andrew whose loss is really dreadful for us all and we remember him with great affection and with gratitude.”

‘A formidable supporter of the sector’

Conservative peer Lord Hodgson said Phillips was “a formidable supporter and developer of the sector” and praised his work as one of six peers on the joint pre-legislative scrutiny committee of the bill that was later passed as the Charities Act 2006.

“I remember him in what became the 2006 Charities Act really holding the government’s feet to the fire it was it was very impressive,” he said. “So, he will really be missed in the sector and elsewhere.”

Phillips’ fellow Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Barker also paid tribute to her former colleague.

“Only a couple of days before, I’d been tidying out my office and came across a very early copy of the charitable status handbook and had been thinking of him,” she said.

Young Citizens: ‘Unwavering commitment to citizenship’

Phillips founded the Citizenship Foundation charity, which was renamed Young Citizens in 2018, with his friends Don Rowe and Tony Thorpe in 1989 to help educate young people about the law.

Together, they established the National Mock Trial Competition, which first took place in Reading in 1991 and introduces thousands of students to the law each year. 

The charity said: “We would like to thank Andrew for his unwavering commitment to citizenship education throughout his life. Our thoughts are with his family at this time.”

Phillips ‘fought tirelessly to use the law as a force for good’

Phillips founded legal firm Bates Wells in 1970 before setting up the Legal Action Group in 1971 and the Solicitors Pro Bono Group in 1996.

Bates Wells said in its statement that Phillips “fought tirelessly to use the law as a force for good with both clients and within the greater legal sector”.

“Andrew never shied away from saying that a legal system that only served the interests of the wealthiest sections of society was no legal system at all and was adamant that Bates Wells would be different,” it said.

“His first trainee recruitment advert – ‘We do not seek to maximise profits. We realise there is a life to live outside the office. We seek to serve the public interest as well as our own’ – mirrors the values and culture of the firm today.”