| Honorific-Prefix: | The Right Honourable |
| The Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede | |
| Office: | Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice |
| Term Start: | 9 July 2024 |
| Primeminister: | Sir Keir Starmer |
| Predecessor: | The Lord Bellamy |
| Office1: | Member of the House of Lords |
| Status1: | Lord Temporal |
| Term Start1: | 19 April 2000 as a life peer |
| Term Start2: | 14 June 1990 |
| Term End2: | 11 November 1999 as a hereditary peer |
| Predecessor2: | The 3rd Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede |
| Successor2: | Seat abolished |
| Birth Date: | 27 October 1958 |
| Party: | Labour |
| Relations: | Ponsonby family |
| Birth Name: | Frederick Matthew Thomas Ponsonby |
Frederick Matthew Thomas Ponsonby, 4th Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede, Baron Ponsonby of Roehampton (born 27 October 1958), is a British peer and Labour Party politician.[1]
Lord Ponsonby serves as a UK Government Minister in the Ministry of Justice since 2024.[2]
The only son of Thomas Ponsonby, 3rd Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede, and Ursula née Fox-Pitt, he attended Holland Park School, before going up to read Physics at Cardiff University, graduating BSc 1980. He then pursued post-graduate studies in Engineering at Imperial College London, CEng 1997.[3]
Lord Ponsonby was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (FIMMM) in 1996.[4]
Succeeding as Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede upon his father's death in 1990, he took his seat in the House of Lords as a hereditary peer in 1991, sitting on the Labour benches.[5]
Lord Ponsonby represented Roehampton Ward as a Councillor on Wandsworth London Borough Council from 1990 to 1994.
Along with all but 92 of his fellow hereditary peers, Lord Ponsonby was ejected from the upper house following the enactment of the House of Lords Act 1999. Having sat on the Lords Opposition frontbench as a spokesman on Education from 1992–1997 as well as on various parliamentary sub-committees, in 2000 he was created a life peer, in addition to his hereditary title, as Baron Ponsonby of Roehampton, of Shulbrede in the County of West Sussex, thus enabling to resume sitting in Parliament.
Having served as an Opposition spokesperson for Justice from April 2020 and Home Affairs from May 2021, on 9 July 2024, Lord Ponsonby was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice and as a Lord-in-Waiting.[6]
A JP for Westminster since 2006, Lord Ponsonby was admitted as a Freeman of the City of London in 2024.
On 5 July 1995, he married Sarah Catriona Pilkington Jackson (born 1957), chief executive of the charity Working Families,[7] and daughter of Richard d'Orville Pilkington Jackson (1921–2008).
Lord and Lady Ponsonby live in London and have two children: