Cabinet reshuffle: Amber Rudd and Sajid Javid promoted

Prime Minister David Cameron is completing his cabinet reshuffle, with a number of leading female ministers being handed big promotions.

Amber Rudd is Energy and Climate Change Secretary while Anna Soubry and Priti Patel will attend Cabinet as small business and employment ministers.

Boris Johnson will not be made a minister but will attend separate Tory “political cabinet” meetings.

Mr Johnson said he would focus on his final year as Mayor of London.

The BBC’s Norman Smith said Mr Johnson would be “integral” to Mr Cameron’s team although it was an acknowledgement that he could not both “run London and a major government department”.

In a break from putting the team together Mr Cameron met his team of new MPs and was roundly applauded by backbench Conservative MPs as he spoke to the influential 1922 committee for the first time since winning a majority.

In other appointments announced on Monday:

• Sajid Javid moves to Business Secretary from Culture Secretary
• Greg Hands becomes George Osborne’s number two in the Treasury as Chief Secretary
• Veteran Tory MP John Whittingdale becomes Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
• Greg Clark is promoted from Universities Minister to Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government
• Robert Halfon named as deputy chairman of the Conservative Party and minister without portfolio
• Oliver Letwin joins the cabinet as head of the Cabinet Office while Matt Hancock becomes Paymaster General and Minister for Civil Service and Efficiency
• Iain Duncan Smith remains as work and pensions secretary while Justine Greening stays at international development
• Patrick McLoughlin has been reappointed transport secretary while Liz Truss stays as environment secretary
• Jeremy Hunt remains at health while Theresa Villiers continues as Northern Ireland Secretary
• Stephen Crabb stays in place as welsh secretary
• Baroness Stowell remains as leader of House of Lords and takes on the role of Lord Privy Seal

A spokesman for Mr Johnson said he had accepted an invitation to attend weekly political cabinets – held after the full cabinet session – but would not take a ministerial role.

“The Mayor has always been clear – he has to fulfil his mandate running London first – and that’s exactly what he will be doing until his term ends in May 2016,” he said.

As he pieces together his new Cabinet, Mr Cameron is filling a number of top roles previously held by Lib Dems in the former coalition government.

Former energy minister Ms Rudd is promoted to take control of energy policy, a role held before the election by Ed Davey. Mr Javid, a rising star in the party, succeeds Vince Cable as business secretary.

And current deputy chief whip Greg Hands will take over from Danny Alexander as Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

Mr Whittingdale, a former private secretary to Lady Thatcher, has joined the government for the first time. He was chair of the influential Commons culture committee over the past five years, overseeing its inquiry into phone hacking.

Eric Pickles, who has been replaced as communities secretary by Greg Clark and drops out of the cabinet, said details of his “new role” would be announced in the next few days.

The Conservatives won a 12-seat majority in the House of Commons in Thursday’s election, taking 331 of the 650 seats. You can see the full results here.

As MPs return to Westminster, Mr Cameron pledged to ensure the “economic recovery reaches all parts of our country”.

Mr Cameron told the 1922 Committee his first term was “about repair and recovery”, saying it fell to his party to put the economy back on track after “the great Labour recession”, and that the next term is about renewal.

“It will be our task to renew a sense of fairness in our society – where those who work hard and do the right thing are able to get on.”

EU negotiations

On Europe, the prime minister said negotiations on reshaping the UK’s membership “would be tough but we have a mandate”.

The BBC’s James Landale said Mr Cameron had also expressed frustration with pollsters for daily updates during the campaign suggesting the parties were level pegging, saying he was “going to sue them for my ulcers”.

Former EU Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso told Radio 4’s Today programme he believed other EU leaders would be prepared to accommodate UK demands as long as they were “compatible with the overall project of European integration”.

“The anti-European party, the UKIP party was reduced to a very small expression, almost irrelevant,” he said.

“So today Prime Minister Cameron has internally much greater authority and from my experience – more than 10 years knowing him – I know he is someone determined and someone pragmatic.”

However, he suggested some of the Conservatives’ pre-election proposals – such as a four-year limit before EU migrants can claim certain benefits – could be “difficult” for other EU countries to accept.

Ministers from Poland, Hungary and Slovakia have told the Financial Times they are not prepared to give up on the principle of freedom of movement for their citizens.

In the first salvo over the EU referendum, which Mr Cameron has pledged to hold by the end of 2017, backbencher Graham Brady said not allowing ministers to campaign against continued membership could lead to tensions.

“Where you have people who have very, very strong beliefs about something, it is far better to recognise the strength of those views and to allow latitude and freedom of expression,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour.

 

BBC