Wallace Browne, Baron Browne of Belmont

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The Right Honourable The Lord Browne of Belmont
Official portrait, 2022
Member of the House of Lords Lord Temporal
Incumbent
Assumed office 24 July 2006 Life peerage
Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for Belfast East
In office 7 March 2007 – 24 March 2011
Preceded by	Michael Copeland
Succeeded by	Sammy Douglas
62nd Lord Mayor of Belfast
In office 1 June 2005 – 1 June 2006
Preceded by	Tom Ekin
Succeeded by	Patrick McCarthy
Member of Belfast City Council
In office 15 May 1985 – 2010
Preceded by	District created
Succeeded by	John Hussey
Constituency	Victoria
Personal details
Born	(1947-10-29) 29 October 1947 (age 77) Belfast, Northern Ireland
Nationality	British
Political party	Democratic Unionist Party
Alma mater	Queen's University Belfast

Wallace Hamilton Browne, Baron Browne of Belmont (born 29 October 1947), is a Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) politician, who has been a Member of the House of Lords since 2006, and was a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA) for East Belfast from 2007 to 2011.

Browne, a long-serving member of the DUP Central Executive; was a member of Belfast City Council for the Victoria electoral area from 1985 until 2010.

During his time on Belfast City Council, Browne was High Sheriff of the City in 2002 and Lord Mayor of Belfast in 2005–06.

In 2007, Browne was elected in the Assembly elections for the East Belfast seat. He remained a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly until 2011. During his time in the Assembly, he represented his party on various committees, including the Justice Committee, Culture and Arts Committee and the Audit Committee. Browne also served as chairman of the Assembly Procedures Committee.

Since 2006, he has served in the House of Lords. He was one of the first three members of the DUP to be introduced to the second chamber as a life peer, giving the party its first-ever representation in the House of Lords. The other two being Maurice Morrow, the chairman of the DUP, and Eileen Paisley, the wife of the late Leader of the DUP, Ian Paisley; all became "working" life peers.^[1] Browne was raised to the peerage as Baron Browne of Belmont, of Belmont in County Antrim on 12 June 2006.^[2]

Browne has been an active working peer during his time in the House of Lords, regularly contributing to debates on a range of issues including: Restoration of the Devolved Institutions in Northern Ireland,^[3] Armed Forces Veterans, Military ^[4] Brexit,^[5] Historical Abuse and Gambling. In 2017, Browne secured the first focused debate in the House of Lords on the issue of online gambling.^{[6][7][8][9] [10][11]}

On 19 October 2024, Browne's portrait in Belfast City Hall was removed from a wall and the glass in its frame smashed during an event to celebrate an Irish language group’s 20th anniversary. A Sinn Féin Assembly employee resigned after admitting involvement in the incident.^[12] It subsequently came to light that the individual is the son of a sitting Sinn Féin MLA.^[13]

In a statement, a Sinn Féin spokesperson said:^[12]

“Today, 21 October, a Sinn Féin employee, who works in the assembly, made the party chief whip aware of their involvement in an incident regarding a portrait in Belfast City Hall which took place on Saturday 19 October. The employee was immediately suspended, and we have notified the PSNI today. The employee has now resigned from their employment and their party membership.”

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) is treating damage caused to the portrait as a hate crime. It was painted by artist Zohar Arnon, who grew up in Israel.^[14] In a social media post, DUP leader Gavin Robinson said: “We don’t know if the motivation was sectarian bigotry, antisemitism, wanton destruction or a heady mix of the three … but [it’s] a disgrace.”^[15] Belfast City Council said it was "assessing the extent of the damage and looking into the circumstances".^[16]

Before he was elected as a member of the NI Assembly in 2007, Browne was previously a grammar school teacher. Browne was also a long-serving trustee of the Somme Association. Browne, a former pupil of Campbell College, Belfast is a graduate of Queen's University, Belfast graduating in 1970 with a degree in zoology^[17]

• List of Northern Ireland Members of the House of Lords

• Four new unionist peers appointed, BBC News, 11 April 2006
• Former Lord Mayor's Portrait Unveiled Belfast City Council