McColl was made a life peer for his work for disabled people in the Queen's Birthday Honours in 1989, which was gazetted on 29 July 1989 with the style and title of Baron McColl of Dulwich, of Bermondsey in the London Borough of Southwark.

[1] He was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Prime Minister John Major (of which he served concurrently with John Ward MP) from 1994 to 1997 for which he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1997.

He studied medicine at the University of London and was Professor of surgery at Guy's Hospital until 1998.

He is a Fellow of King's College London, where he continues to teach on the Guy's Campus.

[4] On 26 June 2017, he introduced the Modern Slavery (Victim Support) Bill, a private member's bill to "make provision about identifying and supporting victims of modern slavery".