Ilora Gillian Finlay, Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, FMedSci is a Welsh doctor, professor of palliative medicine, and an Independent Crossbench member of the House of Lords.
She is a past president of the Royal Society of Medicine. She is a professor of palliative medicine at Cardiff University School of Medicine, and is consultant at the Velindre cancer centre in Cardiff. On 28 June 2001, she was made a life peer as Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, of Llandaff in the County of South Glamorgan.
In 2003 she proposed a bill to ban smoking in public buildings in Wales, three years before it was eventually implemented
In 2007, Lady Finlay introduced a private members bill seeking to change the current system of organ donation from 'opt in' to 'opt out'. Parliamentary timing did not allow for this bill to proceed but the principle continues to be debated. Two years later she succeeded in changing government policy on organ donation to allow potential organ donors to be able to specify a family member of close friend to whom they wish to donate their organ(s).
She is a Vice President of Marie Curie, Patron of The Trussell Trust's foodbank network in Wales, and the Motor Neurone Disease Association. She is also patron of Student Volunteering Cardiff; She was a Founding Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales and is a Member of its inaugural Council.
In March 2015, Finlay was awarded the Grassroot Diplomat Initiative Honouree for her vigorous champion to improving the care of dying patients.
In October 2015 she was appointed chair of the recently commissioned National Mental Capacity Forum, a joint new MOJ and DH initiative.
