| Political offices in the UK government |
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| List of political offices |
A minister of state is a mid-tier Minister of the Crown in the UK government.
| Political offices in the UK government |
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| |
| List of political offices |
A minister of state is a mid-tier Minister of the Crown in the UK government.
Ministers of State are junior to the Prime Minister and Secretaries of State, but senior to a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State and Parliamentary Private Secretary. The office is defined in the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 as "...a member of Her Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom who neither has charge of any public department nor holds any other of the offices specified in Schedule 2 to this Act or any office in respect of which a salary is payable out of money provided by Parliament under section 3(1)(b) of the Ministerial and other Salaries Act 1975". [1]
The designation was first made in 1941 for Lord Beaverbrook, who was a member of the War Cabinet and was tasked with creating the Ministry of Production. [2] His successors were effectively Ministers without Portfolio, but this changed in 1950 when the first junior minister was appointed to that designation, in the Foreign Office, to release some burden from the then-Foreign Secretary. [2]
Ministers of State take charge of a particular part of their department and undertake specific delegated duties. [3] To help to identify these duties, since the 1970s Ministers of State have often been granted a courtesy title which includes the word "for" (rather than "of"). [3]
The current Ministers of State are: [4]
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) is the ministry of foreign affairs and a ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom.
The Home Office (HO), also known as the Home Department, is a ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for immigration, security, and law and order. As such, it is responsible for policing in England and Wales, fire and rescue services in England, Border Force, visas and immigration, and the Security Service (MI5). It is also in charge of government policy on security-related issues such as drugs, counterterrorism, and immigration. It was formerly responsible for His Majesty's Prison Service and the National Probation Service, but these have been transferred to the Ministry of Justice.
The Minister of State for Development and Africa, formerly the Minister of State for Development and the Secretary of State for International Development, is a senior minister of the Crown within the Government of the United Kingdom.
The Department for International Development (DFID) was a ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom, from 1997 to 2020. It was responsible for administering foreign aid.
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The Board of Trade is a British government body concerned with commerce and industry, currently within the Department for Business and Trade. Its full title is The Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council appointed for the consideration of all matters relating to Trade and Foreign Plantations, but is commonly known as the Board of Trade, and formerly known as the Lords of Trade and Plantations or Lords of Trade, and it has been a committee of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom. The board has gone through several evolutions, beginning with extensive involvement in colonial matters in the 17th century, to powerful regulatory functions in the Victorian Era and early 20th century. It was virtually dormant in the last third of the 20th century. In 2017, it was revitalised as an advisory board headed by the International Trade Secretary who has nominally held the title of President of the Board of Trade, and who at present is the only privy counsellor of the board, the other members of the present board filling roles as advisors.
First Secretary of State is an office that is sometimes held by a minister of the Crown in the Government of the United Kingdom. The office indicates seniority, including over all other secretaries of state. The office is not always in use, so there have sometimes been extended gaps between successive holders.
The parliamentary under-secretary of state is the lowest of three tiers of government minister in the UK government, immediately junior to a Minister of State, which is itself junior to a Secretary of State.
David Arthur Russell Howell, Baron Howell of Guildford, is a British Conservative Party politician, journalist, and economic consultant. Having been successively Secretary of State for Energy and then for Transport under Margaret Thatcher, Howell has more recently been a Minister of State in the Foreign Office from the election in 2010 until the reshuffle of 2012. He has served as Chair of the House of Lords International Relations Committee since May 2016. Along with William Hague, Sir George Young and Kenneth Clarke, he is one of the few Cabinet ministers from the 1979–97 governments who continued to hold high office in the party, being its deputy leader in the House of Lords until 2010. His daughter, Frances, was married to the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne.
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The Conservative government of the United Kingdom that began in 1957 and ended in 1964 consisted of three ministries: the first Macmillan ministry, second Macmillan ministry, and then the Douglas-Home ministry. They were respectively led by Harold Macmillan and Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who were appointed by Queen Elizabeth II.
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Oliver Michael Robert Eden, 8th Baron Henley, 6th Baron Northington PC, is a British hereditary peer and politician, who is a Conservative member of the House of Lords. He has served in a number of ministerial positions in the governments of Margaret Thatcher, John Major, David Cameron and Theresa May, most recently as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
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In Australia, a departmental secretary is the most senior public servant of an Australian Government or state government department. They are typically responsible for the day-to-day actions of a department.
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The Minister of State for Climate, Environment and Energy is a mid-level position in His Majesty's Government based in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. It has been held by The Lord Benyon since November 2023.