On Tuesday, we looked at the 21 lucky new intake MPs who have been appointed as Political Private Secretaries to see if there are any discernible patterns in their appointments. Today, we turn our attention to the full list of PPS’s in the May Government (all 42 are listed by department at the foot of this post).
Team Remain?
While over 90 per cent of the 2015 intake PPS’s supported Remain in the EU referendum, among the full list there is rather more balance. In total, 13 of the 42 (31 per cent) backed Leave – a proportion much closer to that seen in the wider Parliamentary Conservative Party. What this means, of course, is that the non-2015 intake PPSs were heavily drawn from Leavers – indeed, just over half their number were anti-EU. This would suggest that at most there was a different filter applied when promoting new MPs – or, more innocently, that MPs’ views on the EU were not a major factor for the new Government at all.
Team May?
Our second test is to tally up the number who supported Theresa May or Andrea Leadsom in the final round of the leadership race. Seven MPs on the list did not publicly declare for either candidate, but among the remaining 35 the trend is clear. An overwhelming 31 were declared May supporters, compared to just four who backed Leadsom – meaning 89 per cent supported the eventual winner. Given that only one of the new intake MPs was a Leadsomite, that means the longer-serving PPS’s are split 13-3 in May’s favour. Readers will recall that by the time Leadsom withdrew from the race, May had a commanding lead among MPs, but even so this is a striking trend. Being on the right team from the outset is evidently good for the health of one’s career.
Team Women?
The third notable trend among the new intake PPS’s was the relatively high proportion of female MPs who had been promoted – 12 of the 21, to be precise. Repeating that tally for the full PPS list does not increase the total very much at all, though. Only three of the longer-serving MPs are women, making 15 in total (36 per cent of PPS’s). That isn’t entirely surprising; the campaign to increase the number of female ministers, and the historically low number of female MPs, means that almost half of those who were in Parliament before 2015 already hold other ministerial positions, so weren’t in the market for a PPS job in the first place. Even with that constraint, this PPS list has a drastically better gender balance than the wider Parliamentary Party, 20 per cent of whom are women.
The full PPS list, by department:
Prime Minister
George Hollingbery MP, PPS to Theresa May
HM Treasury
John Glen MP, PPS to Philip Hammond
Craig Williams MP, PPS to David Gauke
Home Office
David Rutley MP, PPS to Amber Rudd
Victoria Atkins MP, PPS to Brandon Lewis
Tom Pursglove MP, PPS to Ben Wallace
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Andrew Stephenson MP, PPS to Boris Johnson
Pauline Latham MP, PPS to Sir Alan Duncan
Amanda Milling MP, PPS to Baroness Anelay of St Johns
Ministry of Defence
Graham Evans MP, PPS to Michael Fallon
Jo Churchill MP, PPS to Mike Penning
Ministry of Justice
Robert Jenrick MP, PPS to Elizabeth Truss
Department for Education
Henry Smith MP, PPS to Justine Greening
Seema Kennedy MP, PPS to Nick Gibb
Edward Argar MP, PPS to Nick Gibb
Department for Exiting the European Union
Stewart Jackson MP, PPS to David Davis
Jeremy Quin MP, PPS to David Jones
Department for International Trade
Iain Stewart MP, PPS to Liam Fox
Helen Whately MP, PPS to Greg Hands
Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Conor Burns MP, PPS to Greg Clark
Wendy Morton MP, PPS to Jo Johnson
Department of Health
James Morris MP, PPS to Jeremy Hunt
James Berry MP, PPS to Philip Dunne
Department for Work and Pensions
Mark Pawsey MP, PPS to Damian Green
Peter Heaton-Jones MP, PPS to Penny Mordaunt
Department for Transport
Mike Freer MP, PPS to Chris Grayling
Victoria Prentis MP, PPS to John Hayes
Department for Communities and Local Government
Rebecca Harris MP, PPS to Sajid Javid
Rebecca Pow MP, PPS to Gavin Barwell
Leader of the House of Commons
Kevin Hollinrake MP, PPS to David Lidington
Leader of the House of Lords
Kwasi Kwarteng MP, PPS to Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
Scotland Office
David Morris MP, PPS to David Mundell
Wales Office
Glyn Davies MP, PPS to Alun Cairns
Northern Ireland Office
Oliver Colvile MP, PPS to James Brokenshire
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Sheryll Murray MP, PPS to Andrea Leadsom
Simon Hoare MP, PPS to George Eustice
Department for International Development
Kelly Tolhurst MP, PPS to Priti Patel
Amanda Solloway MP, PPS to Rory Stewart
Department for Culture, Media and Sport
Craig Whittaker MP, PPS to Karen Bradley
Mims Davies MP, PPS to Matthew Hancock
Cabinet Office
Lucy Frazer MP, PPS to Ben Gummer
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Conservative Party Chairman
Stuart Andrew MP, PPS to Patrick McLoughlin
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