Vincent Nichols

The conservative Archbishop of Birmingham heads the names sent to Pope Benedict XVI as possible successors to the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, who is due to retire soon. An announcement from the Vatican is expected before Christmas. Archbishop Nichols trained at the English College, Rome’s hothouse seminary for clerical high-flyers, before serving as a priest in Liverpool, where he grew up. He contributes regularly to the BBC Radio 4 show Thought for the Day.

Andy Atkins

The affable but little known new executive director of Friends of the Earth, will spearhead the offensive against the Government on climate change, nuclear installations and renewable energy over the next few months. Mr Atkins, 47, was a key player behind the Make Poverty History campaign in 2005. FoE is pressing for aviation and shipping emissions to be included in the Climate Change Bill in December. Mr Atkins will also be pushing for amendments in the Planning Bill to prevent a new commision from deciding where all new nuclear plants should be built.

Iain Gray

The 51-year-old Labour MSP for East Lothian is favourite to be elected as the new Labour leader at Holyrood after the resignation of Wendy Alexander. His allies say that behind an almost subterranean public profile, he is fizzing with ideas to turn around Labour’s fortunes in the Scottish Parliament and to burst the bubble of Alex Salmond, the ebullient Nationalist First Minister. He studied physics at the University of Edinburgh, before becoming a teacher and joining Oxfam. He was a junior minister in the first Scottish Executive in 1999 and was later Minister for Social Justice, followed by a stint as Minister for Enterprise, Transport and Lifelong Learning.

Janet Paraskeva

The chairman designate of the new Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission endeared herself to ministers with the wideranging reforms she made when chief executive of the Law Society from 2000 to 2006. It was, she said, “like turning around a supertanker”.

The new commission takes over in October from the much-reviled Child Support Agency. Ms Paraskeva, 63, and openly gay, has just four years to change its reputation as an arbitrary and inefficient debt-collecting agency that penalises fathers rather than as a help to mothers who are denied child maintenance from absent fathers.

Sir Igor Judge

The 67-year-old traditionalist takes over as the most senior judge in England and Wales when he becomes the new Lord Chief Justice on October 1. His stance over sentencing policy will be critical to relations between judges and the executive. Recently he said that knife crime had risen to “epidemic proportions” and urged courts to do everything possible to eradicate it, including imposing the severest sentences. But he also favours keeping custody as a last resort and a public debate over the relative merits of expenditure on more prisons, as against more hospitals or schools.