Lord Prior is Deputy Chairman UK and Global Senior Advisor at Lazard. He is also Chairman of Protas, a not for profit clinical trials business, Chairman of the Cambridge Life Sciences Council, a Trustee of the Cambridge Early Cancer Diagnostics Institute and Chairman of Tympa Health, a hearing and care assessment business. He is a member of the Novo Nordisk Sustainability Advisory Council, a Trustee of the Cambridge University Institute of Early Cancer Diagnostics, a Fellow of Local Globe and advises a number of digital health companies. He is an advisor to Healthcare UK, providing strategic advice to the Department of International Trade.

He served as Chairman of Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust from 2002 – 2012 before becoming Chairman of the Care Quality Commission. In 2015, he was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Health and created a Life Peer. In December 2016, he was appointed as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, with specific responsibility for developing industrial strategy. He stepped down from this role in October 2017 to become Chairman of University College London Hospitals and subsequently became Chairman of NHS England and a member of the UK Life Sciences Council and a director of Genomics England to April 2022.

He was educated at Cambridge University and subsequently qualified as a barrister. He trained in finance at Lehman Brothers and Lazard Freres in New York before holding a number of senior positions within the industrial sector, including British Steel, where he was Commercial Director. He was elected MP for North Norfolk in 1997 and became CEO and Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party.