New PM and a focus on economic stability

Published: Wednesday, 2nd November 2022
By: Harriet Dyball, Political Consultant, British Plastics Federation

Following Rishi Sunak’s election as leader of the Conservative Party last week and his appointment as the new Prime Minister, he gave a short address outside Downing Street in which he emphasised that economic stability and confidence would be central to his agenda but that there would be difficult decisions to come. He also promised to deliver on the promises of the 2019 Conservative manifesto and his allies have since countered calls for a general election, from the Labour Party, with the argument that the PM is delivering on the manifesto he and his Conservative colleagues stood on in 2019 and so there is no need for a fresh one.

One of the first decisions the new PM and his Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, made was to postpone the fiscal statement planned for Monday 31 October to 17 November 2022.  This statement is expected to be a full Autumn Statement and the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast will also be published on the 17th November. Ahead of the fiscal statement, the new PM will attend the COP27 climate summit. Announcing the decision to attend on social media, the PM said ‘There is no long-term prosperity without action on climate change. There is no energy security without investing in renewables. That is why I will attend COP27 next week: to deliver on Glasgow’s legacy of building a secure and sustainable future’.

New Cabinet and Ministers

Further to Rishi Sunak’s appointment as Prime Minister last week, he carried out a Cabinet and ministerial reshuffle. The new Cabinet includes MPs from all the different factions of the Conservative Party in an effort to unite the party and this ‘unity’ approach is reflected in junior ministerial appointments as well. In a bid to unify the party, the new PM re-appointed Suella Braverman as the Home Secretary, which has enraged her critics and been a key focus of Labour Party attacks on the Conservatives in recent days.

Appointments of particular interest to the BPF are:

• Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP, Secretary of State for BEIS
• Rt Hon Dr Therese Coffey MP, Secretary of State for DEFRA
• Rt Hon John Glen MP, Chief Secretary to the Treasury
• Nusrat Ghani MP, Minister for Industry, BEIS
• Trudy Harrison, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at DEFRA

Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP Secretary of State for BEIS

The new Secretary of State for BEIS is an entrepreneur who before his political career set up a successful design, print and website development company and a marketing company. He became the Conservative MP for Welwyn Hatfield in 2005 and quite swiftly became Vice Chair of the Party and then Shadow Housing Minister. In 2012 he was promoted to Co-chair of the Conservative Party and Minister without Portfolio.

In the 2015 post-election reshuffle he was named as a Minister of State in the Department for International Development. In July 2015 he also was appointed a Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. 

He was one of the 118 Conservative MPs who voted against the government's proposed EU withdrawal agreement in January 2019, saying the backstop was his sticking point as it would lock the UK into a customs arrangement. He voted against it again in March, and in a free vote in same week was one of 188 Conservative MPs who voted against the government to oppose extending Article 50. In the second March vote on the deal he changed his vote to be in favour of the deal.

In the 2019 leadership election he declared his support for Boris Johnson. Johnson rewarded him by bringing him into the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Transport.

Shapps launched his own leadership campaign on 10 July 2022 with promised to “plan, communicate, campaign and deliver”. He believed in decreasing taxes, in the importance of security and in controlling public spending. He dropped out of the race on the 12 July 2022, and then supported Rishi Sunak.

He left the role of Secretary of State for Transport during Liz Truss' first reshuffle as Prime Minister. Truss brought Shapps back as Home Secretary on 19 October 2022 to replace Suella Braverman, who resigned after 43 days in the role.  In October 2022 Rishi Sunak appointed him as Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

Rt Hon Dr Therese Coffey MP, Secretary of State for DEFRA

The new Secretary of State for DEFRA was finance director for Mars Drinks UK before being elected as MP for Suffolk Coastal in the 2010 General Election.

She was promoted in the reshuffle of September 2012 and appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to the new Business Minister Michael Fallon. She was then made a Whip in the 2014 reshuffle, and then less than a year later became Deputy Leader of the House of Commons in the post-election reshuffle. 

She declared her support for Theresa May as the next Conservative Party Leader and Prime Minister in 2016.  May named her as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in her first government. She retained this position in May's second reshuffle in 2017.

She supported Boris Johnson in the 2019 leadership election, and Johnson then promoted her to become Minister of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. A few months later she was promoted to become Secretary of State for Work and Pensions after Amber Rudd resigned.

A close supporter of Liz Truss during the 2022 Conservative Leadership election, she was appointed as Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in September 2022.  She was appointed as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs by Rishi Sunak in October 2022.

Rt Hon John Glen MP, Chief Secretary to the Treasury

After Oxford, John Glen worked for Accenture and then went to work as an adviser to Conservative Party Leader William Hague before becoming Deputy Director and then Director of the party’s Research department before returning to Accenture and being elected as the MP for Salisbury in 2010.

Ahead of the EU referendum, while admitting he is a Eurosceptic, Glen announced he would reluctantly be voting to remain with the EU in the referendum, due to worry over short-term economy costs and security risks.

In Theresa May's first reshuffle he became Parliamentary Private Secretary to the new Chancellor, Philip Hammond. A year later she moved him to become Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and in 2018 he became Economic Secretary (Minister for the City of London).  He was appointed Chief Secretary to the Treasury in Rishi Sunak's first government reshuffle in October 2022.

Nusrat Ghani MP, Minister for Industry, BEIS

Ghani started her career in the City at Goldman Sachs, before venturing into the public affairs industry with spells at Age Concern and Breakthrough Breast Cancer. She then spent six years at the BBC World Service which entailed being posted to Afghanistan. She was elected as the MP for Wealden in the 2015 General Election.

She 2016 she announced that she would vote to leave the European Union, and that while immigration is not bad the UK has to be in control of its borders and be able to negotiate its own trading agreements and to allocate money according to UK priorities, not Brussels'.

She declared her support for Theresa May as the next Conservative Party Leader and Prime Minister in 2016.  She was given two roles in the January 2018 reshuffle: Assistant Government Whip and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Transport.

She supported Liz Truss in the 2022 Conservative Leadership election.  She was appointed as Minister of State for Science and Investment Security in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in September 2022 during Liz Truss' first reshuffle as Prime Minister. She was re-appointed to the role by Rishi Sunak in October 2022.

Trudy Harrison MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at DEFRA

In the 1990s she worked for local company Sellafield, and then developed her own childcare business in Bootle in the constituency. She was elected as the MP for Copeland in a 2017 by-election.

She was promoted to Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Transport during the September 2021 reshuffle. She was promoted to a Minister of State in the department in July 2022, following the mass exodus of ministers on 6 and 7 July in protest to Boris Johnson remaining in office.

She initially supported Penny Mordaunt in the 2022 Conservative Leadership election, then switched to Liz Truss.  In September 2022 she was appointed as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs during Liz Truss' first reshuffle as a Prime Minister. She was re-appointed to the role by Rishi Sunak in October 2022.