Steve Barclay has once again been named health secretary after another Parliament shake-up.
He was chosen to lead the Department for Health and Social Care under new prime minister Rishi Sunak.
It comes as former chancellor Rishi Sunak took over as Liz Truss’s replacement on Tuesday (October 25), becoming Britain’s first ever non-white, Hindu PM as well as its youngest leader.
Delighted to return to @DHSCgovuk as Secretary of State. Looking forward to working with colleagues across health and social care. pic.twitter.com/jIp6LVDrZY
— Steve Barclay (@SteveBarclay) October 25, 2022
Barclay previously served as health secretary under Boris Johnson for just two months, and his appointment caused controversy as health chiefs branded him a “bully” who was hostile to the NHS.
Before being replaced as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care at the beginning of September, Barclay set out the Government’s priorities over the winter in a speech titled “NHS – Preparing for winter and beyond”.
He stressed that “scaling innovation so we adopt the opportunities of tech in a way Covid showed could be done” is a key priority this winter.
He also said his number one priority is cutting ambulance waiting times and confirmed that a “new focus on operational performance underpinned by data” and “targeted work over the summer” was being used to deal with issues in a small number of trusts that NHS data shows account for almost half of ambulance handover delays. He has been tackled before about the Government’s lack of action concerning waiting times.
But who is Steve Barclay? Here is everything you need to know.
Who is Steve Barclay?
After a relatively slow start to his ministerial career, Barclay – a Leave supporter – was catapulted to the Cabinet front rank as Brexit secretary in November 2018.
The son of a trade-union official father and a civil-servant mother, he has previously described himself as coming from a “working-class Northern background” in Lancashire.
The youngest of three brothers, he came from the first generation of his family to go to university, reading history at Cambridge and spending a gap year serving in the Army with the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.
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After training as a lawyer, he worked as a regulator for the Financial Services Authority and head of anti-money laundering at Barclays Bank, before embarking on a political career.
Picked for David Cameron’s “A-list” of favoured candidates, he finally won the seat of North East Cambridgeshire in the 2010 general election, having twice stood unsuccessfully for Parliament.
Despite his record as a government loyalist, he had to wait until after the following election, in 2015, before he made it to the ministerial ranks as a junior whip.
Instead, he spent the coalition years building a reputation as a tough and effective interrogator of officials, as a member of the Commons Public Accounts Committee.
During the EU referendum in 2016, he supported the official Vote Leave campaign, after ministers were given the freedom to campaign for either side.
Following the 2017 election, he was finally promoted out of the whips’ office by then-prime minister Theresa May, who made him her new City minister.
His financial background made him an obvious choice at a time when foreign competitors were looking to take advantage of Brexit to take away business from the Square Mile.
Nevertheless, he served only six months in the Treasury before he was promoted again, to minister of state at the Department of Health and Social Care.
After his first Cabinet role as Brexit secretary, he became chief secretary to the Treasury in February 2020, and was appointed Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in September 2021.
Barclay is married, with two children.