Britain’s new prime minister Liz Truss has announced her new cabinet after a dramatic first day in 10 Downing Street.
Her headline appointments included Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor, Suella Braverman as home secretary, James Cleverly as foreign secretary and Jacob Rees-Mogg as business secretary.
All of the above are seen as Truss loyalists and the reshuffle marked an almost complete clearout of ministers regarded as allies of her leadership rival Rishi Sunak, including Dominic Raab, Grant Shapps, Steve Barclay and George Eustice - an approach that risks further fracturing a deeply divided Conservative Party battered and bruised by Boris Johnson’s numerous scandals and eight weeks of often toxic campaigning.
Arguably one of the most significant appointments was that of her old friend and karaoke partner Therese Coffey as health secretary and deputy PM.
Ms Coffey, 50, has already been pressed into action to defend the reshuffle, telling Sky News on Wednesday morning: “This is, I think, a government of all the talents that we have in this party.”
She said that Ms Truss had appointed a cabinet containing a mixture of “proactive supporters” and people who did not endorse her candidacy, adding that “people will be able to see that we will continue to focus on having a broad church of people in our government”.
Her own appointment as health secretary, Britain’s third since Matt Hancock’s resignation last summer, will see her tasked with restoring order to an NHS battling dangerously long waiting times and a huge operations backlog and has already caused controversy because she is a practising Catholic, potentially placing access to abortion at risk.
But Ms Coffey moved quickly to dismiss that fear, saying that she would “prefer that people didn’t have abortions, but I am not going to condemn people that do”.
“I’m conscious I have voted against abortion laws,” she told Sky News. “What I will say is I’m a complete democrat and that is done. It’s not that I’m seeking to undo any aspects of abortion laws.”
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, she said that patients would not be charged to see their GP, an idea mooted by Ms Truss during her campaign, and that health and social care improvements would be funded through general taxation.
Asked about the new PM’s plan to divert funds earmarked for the NHS towards social care, Ms Coffey said: “People are clear that, within the system, there are people currently in hospital who don’t need to be in hospital, do need continuing care, but not necessarily in our acute hospitals.
“That’s why making sure that we help patients get to the right place where they need to be will open up the opportunity and capacity for more people to be treated in our acute hospitals.”
She also hinted during another interview with LBC that she would push for the NHS to use the private healthcare sector to clear the aforementioned operations backlog, saying: “I think we just need to use every capacity that we can, and we already use the independent sector.”
On the prospect of junior doctors striking over pay, Ms Coffey said: “I hope that, of course, people will continue to put their patients first.”
Therese Coffey was born on 18 November 1971 in Billinge, Lancashire, but grew up in Liverpool, attending St Mary’s College in Crosby and St Edward’s College in the city itself.
She went on to attend Somerville College, Oxford, and complete a PhD in chemistry at University College London, before working in corporate administration, first for Mars, where she was finance director for Mars Drinks UK, and then at the BBC, when she was an accountant within its property division.
Her career in politics began when she ran unsuccessfully as the Conservative candidate for the European Parliament in 2004 and 2009 and for Wrexham in 2005.
She was finally elected as MP for Suffolk Coastal in 2010, the same year Ms Truss entered Parliament as South West Norfolk’s representative, marking the beginning of their friendship.
Ms Truss is now the fourth PM Ms Coffey has served under in Westminster, having been a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, a parliamentary private secretary, an assistant government whip and deputy leader of the Commons under David Cameron, an environment minister under Theresa May and Mr Johnson and then the latter’s work and pensions secretary.
She gained attention during the phone hacking scandal in 2011 and 2012 when she leapt to the defence of News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks during committee hearings into the affair. She argued that Ms Brooks was not responsible for bad practice at the tabloid solely by virtue of being editor and was being made the subject of a “witch hunt” and by declining to support motion’s critical of News International executives Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch.
Developing a reputation for being methodical but unemotional, Ms Coffey has faced criticism for twice voting against same-sex marriage in 2013 and 2019 because of her religious convictions and from her own constituents in East Anglia over the proposed selling off of publicly-owned woodland.
Away from politics, she is said to be partial to gardening, an occasional tipple and a cigar – and, apparently, Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg.
