THE lawyer who defended Nelson Mandela is to be awarded an honorary degree tomorrow.

The human rights lawyer Lord Joel Joffe and Philip Williamson, chief executive of Nationwide Building Society, will be awarded degrees at the University of Bath.

Mr Williamson will receive the degree of Doctor of Business Administration in the Bath Assembly Rooms at 2.30pm today.

Lord Joffe, from Liddington, will receive the degree of Doctor of Laws tomorrow at 2.30pm.

Lord Joffe represented Nelson Mandela in the Rivonia trial in 1963 and 1964 when 10 leaders of the African National Congress were tried for activities designed to "ferment violent revolution".

In 1965 he settled in the UK and worked as a policy checker with Abbey Life Assurance in London, before co-founding the financial services company Allied Dunbar.

Lord Joffe was formerly the chairman of Oxfam and has worked with other charities, and he has campaigned for voluntary euthanasia.

He said: "I'm delighted. It's very nice to get and obviously it's a considerable honour to get a degree from an excellent university.

"One of the reasons I was particularly pleased to get it from Bath is because it's extended and created a campus in Swindon and they're going to be having a big part of the university here."

Lord Joffe has already received honorary degrees from Brunel University, the Open University and a university in South Africa.

He said: "I've had a few. They've all been extremely generous to me."

Lord Joffe will give a short speech to the students graduating tomorrow.

He said: "I will be talking about human rights and relating this to the position in the world today where human rights in many parts of the developing world are not as they should be."

Mr Williamson ensured that Swindon-based Nationwide kept its mutual status and did not convert to a public limited company, as many other building societies have done. He has also championed community activity by businesses, including the Nationwide's support for a children's charity.

In all there will be six ceremonies today and tomorrow at which 600 students will receive their degree awards.