Lindy Cameron, UK’s chief of cyber security, is named new envoy to India

While Cameron is UK’s first woman envoy to India, Delhi has had three women envoys in London since the 1950s.

“Immensely proud to be appointed the next British High Commissioner to India. Huge thanks to @AlexEllis for leaving such a great legacy. So looking forward to working with the amazing @UKinIndia team. I can’t wait to get started,” Cameron said in a post on X.

Cameron, who has been serving as the Chief Executive of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre since 2020, has been working with the British government since 1998.

She was earlier the Director General of the Northern Ireland Office (2019-2020), and has spent a large part of her career in the UK’s aid agency, DFID (Department for International Development).

Between 1998 and 2007, she was with the DFID in Kabul, Baghdad, Hanoi and Lagos. And again from 2011 to 2019, she served in the DFID – in West Asia, North Africa and country programmes. In 2009-10, she was in Helmand, as head of the provincial reconstruction team and FCO senior representative in Southern Afghanistan.

With her varied experience in several conflict zones, Cameron brings a very different experience from her predecessor, Alex Ellis, who was a career diplomat. Ellis will be going as the British envoy to Spain.

Cameron’s appointment comes at a time when India and the UK are negotiating the Free Trade Agreement, and both sides have expressed intent and interest to wrap up the negotiations by the end of the year