HIGH Court and Court of Appeal judges laid much of the blame for the huge bonuses paid to two Newcastle Airport directors at the door of the chair of the remuneration committee Rosemary Radcliffe.

Judges said that Ms Radcliffe’s failure to check the contracts of John Parkin and Lars Friis resulted in the airport agreeing to pay the men huge sums.

But Ms Radcliffe’s biography reveals she is hugely experienced in the corporate world.

After reading philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford, she gained a masters degree in economics at Nuffield College.

Prior to retiring as a partner in 2001, she was chief economist with multinational professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

In 2000, she was awarded a CBE for services to business competitiveness.

She has served on a number of UK government advisory and review bodies and was, from 2001 to 2004, the first independent Complaints Commissioner for the UK Financial Services Authority.

In 2005, she was appointed as a non-executive director at Northern Rock.

She was later appointed to the Rock's audit committee, which was responsible for monitoring the work of her former employers PwC.

She attended one committee meeting and then resigned, following concerns from PwC that her role might compromise its independence as auditor.

However, she was later reappointed to the committee until she was removed, along with several others, from her £56,000-a-year post in 2006 by new Rock chairman Bryan Sanderson.

Following the collapse of Northern Rock, questions were asked about Ms Radcliffe’s appointment by the House of Commons Treasury Committee which was examining the background to the crisis.

Ms Radcliffe is currently a trustee for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.