Parker was educated at a comprehensive school in Newcastle upon Tyne[2] and then at Churchill College, Cambridge, where he studied the natural sciences.
[5] After leading the Security Service's response to the 7 July 2005 London bombings and the 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot, he became Deputy Director General in 2007.
The Kremlin was taking part in "deliberate, targeted, malign activity intended to undermine our free, open, and democratic societies".
[7] In 2019, Parker, writing with Cressida Dick, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, suggested that far-right and far-left terrorism have been identified as key threats to the safety and prosperity of the nation.
They warned that while Islamist terrorism remains the largest by scale, they are also “concerned about the growing threat from other forms of violent extremism… covering a spectrum of hate-driven ideologies, including the extreme right and left.”[8] In December 2020, it was announced that Parker would be created a crossbench life peer in the 2020 Special Honours.
[14] The ceremonial breaking of the Lord Chamberlain's "wand of office" during the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II on 19 September 2022 symbolized the formal end of Parker's service as Lord Chamberlain to the monarch before the late Queen was lowered into the Royal Vault for private interment that evening to join her sister, parents (George VI and Elizabeth), and husband.