Explainer: who are England’s new health ministers?

Lucy North/PA Wire

By Emma Wilkinson and Stephen Robinson

Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer was quick to appoint his Cabinet following the election of a Labour government last week.

Many of the posts, including health, went to those who had performed the shadow role while in opposition. But there have been some surprises.

Wes Streeting, health and social care secretary

Despite only a narrow victory in his constituency, where he won by just 500 seats, Wes Streeting hit the ground running in his new job as secretary of state for health and social care. Not long after the transition to the new government had been formalised, he stepped into the Department of Health and Social Care to be greeted by NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard, the UK Health Security Agency chief executive Professor Dame Jenny Harries, and chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty, among others.

An MP since 2010, Streeting was appointed shadow health secretary in November 2021, before that working as a shadow minister for schools and child poverty. In a memoir published last year, he discussed his early years brought up in the East End of London with parents in their teens when he was born. Growing up in poverty in a council flat with traditional working-class roots, Streeting did well at school and went to Cambridge University, after which he became president of the National Union of Students before working for charities and as a public sector consultant.