“Values such as integrity, decency, respect and professionalism should matter to us all. I have watched with growing concern as those values have fractured under your leadership.”
These were the words that Victoria Atkins, 47, wrote in her resignation letter to Boris Johnson, as she and dozens of other ministers stepped down from his government last year.
The former criminal barrister and MP for Louth and Horncastle since May 2015 has been called a "new Tory talent" as she replaced Steve Barclay as health secretary this week, and her appointment might seem surprising next to some of the other big hitters who've been hired in Rishi Sunak's reshuffle, from former foreign secretary James Cleverly to former PM David Cameron.
But those who know Atkins say her resignation letter tells you everything you need to know about the woman now in charge of the NHS and fifth health secretary in two years. As a seasoned junior minister, she's said to be "steady", "personable", and "definitely on the left of the party", according to colleagues. Does her appointment signal a step-change from the right-wing politics of Suella Braverman towards a more liberal era of Conservatism?
Quite possibly, say insiders. Atkins, a Remain voter, has long expressed uneasiness at some of her parties' more right-leaning decisions over recent years: she was reportedly critical of the Tories' flagship Rwanda policy WHEN, and said "we can and must be better than this" when she resigned from Johnson's government.
Before that, she'd been in charge of Afghan resettlement after the evacuation of Kabul in 2021, and she has spoken out on the escalating costs of childcare for parents, with colleagues describing her as personable and adept at managing relationships with key players outside government.
So what's her background and how did she get here?
The daughter of a Tory MP who went on to be a barrister
Atkins grew up in Blackpool, where her father, the Conservative MP Sir Robert Atkins, was working as MP for Preston North and then South Ribble during the 1970s and 80s. Her mother Dulcie Atkins also worked as a Tory councillor and mayor.
She attended private school (she has since recalled how she "could hear the screams from the Pleasure Beach whilst sitting in class") and was the first in her family to to go university, studying law at Cambridge followed by a career as a criminal barrister in London, prosecuting organised crime and fraud. "I have prosecuted international drug trafficking rings, gun-runners and fraudsters who steal £100s million from British taxpayers," she writes in the bio on her website.
"I am one of only 30 advocates in England and Wales appointed to the prestigious Attorney General’s Regulators Panel and the Serious Fraud Office’s List of specialist fraud prosecutors. I hope to put my experiences in the criminal courts to good use in the political world."
After several years as a lawyer, she followed her parents' footsteps into politics, being elected as the Tory candidate in the safe seat of Louth and Horncastle in 2015. Former PM John Major (a colleague of her father's in the House of Commons) backed her first parliamentary election campaign thanks to knowing her "since she was born".
She was re-elected in 2017 and 2019 and has campaigned for access to services in rural areas, support for domestic abuse victims, and the recruitment of more GPs during that time.
Policing, domestic violence and prisons
Atkins' first government role was in 2017, when she was appointed to the Home Office, replacing Sarah Newton as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Vulnerability, Safeguarding and Countering Extremism - her most memorable public moment being an "awkward" interview with Nick Ferrari on LBC, in which she admitted she did not know the number of police officers in the country (he told her it was 123,142).
She went onto work as Minister for Women from 2018 t0 2020 before moving to the Ministry of Justice in September 2021, taking the role of Minister of State for Prisons and Probation in a nod to her legal background.
She also took the role of Minister for Afghan Resettlement, overseeing Operation Warm Welcome in August 2021, before resigning from the justice department in July 2022 over concerns with Johnson's leadership.
The following year she was appointed Financial Secretary to the Treasury.
A diabetic with a sugar boss husband
It's quite the declaration of interest: a diabetic new health secretary who just so happens to be married to Paul Kenward, the boss of one of the world's biggest sugar companies, and also owns the largest legal cannabis farm in the country.
So why on earth did Sunak choose her for the gig? Atkins herself claims her diagnosis of type 1 diabetes at the age of three fuelled her desire to go into politics. She has spent years campaigning on the disease and worked closely with the charity Diabetes UK to promote education.
Victoria Atkins now #HealthSec but…husband
— Truthoverdishonesty (@Nigelj08223326) November 13, 2023
👇
Paul Kenward is a British businessman is chief executive of ABF Sugar, one of the world's largest 👉sugar companies🍯❎🩺@stef18881 @SusanChubb1 @HealthFirstAK @dr_ianjackson @drjohnhmiller @reesprescribe #conflicting pic.twitter.com/eLwmE4yRaU
But her husband's job will certainly be closely examined as a potential conflict of interest: Kenward has been chief executive of British Sugar since October 2022 and worked there for the last seven years — a fact that has shocked health campaigners who have long been calling on the government to take action of obesity by clamping down on sugar companies.
Kenward, an Oxford and Harvard graduate who was president of the Oxford Union for a term in 1996, also oversees a company that owns a legal cannabis farm used for producing children’s epilepsy medicine - another conflict of interest that came to bite Atkins in 2018 when she was forced to recuse herself from speaking about drugs policy because of it. She has been accused of hypocrisy over this in the past, after saying that she was staunchly against the use of cannabis for a number of years.
How Atkins met Kenward is not known, but the couple have a pet whippet called Bob and an 11-year-old son called Monty, who she brought along to an early-morning Times Radio interview last month to make a point about the cost of childcare.
"We like to spend what little spare time we have going to running around after our son, Monty, building sandcastles on the beautiful Lincolnshire coastline and pulling our boots on to walk the Wolds," she writes on her website.
Her Instagram grid paints a wholesome picture of their family life together, from walks in their native Lincolnshire to Bob winning a rosette at a dog fair and dressed up in Christmas antlers.
Sugar, clearly, is a big point of debate at the family dinner table, not just between Atkins and her husband but her son, too. "Lemon juice or sugar first? Clearly lemon juice but the 11 year old is adamant that it is sugar first. After 6 pancakes, we will have to agree to disagree," she wrote next to a picture of a pancake on Shrove Tuesday this year.
'Steady' and 'able' — can she save the NHS?
After years spent being tipped for a role in almost every single Cabinet reshuffle, Atkins finally walked through that Downing Street door this week, as Britain's fifth Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in the last two years.
But there's no time for celebrating. She arrives at what many are calling a "critical juncture" for the NHS, so her new in-tray will be bulging. Amongst the priorities handed to her by Barclay are the need to resolve the doctors' strikes, reduce NHS waiting lists and seeking out more efficient methods of NHS spending.
Her predecessor Steve Barclay was widely considered a "divisive" health secretary — can she bring those warring factions together? She certainly has the potential to, say most commentators.
Some say her previous role in the Treasury could be both a blessing and a curse for the gig. Yes, she has experience overseeing financial settlements in the healthcare sector, but her history with the Treasury has the potential to make her hostile to their demands.
Strikes - or preventing them - is likely to be one of the first tasks on her agenda, with Pat Cullen, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, already writing to remind Atkins of this new responsibility; that she must engage nursing staff in her plans and deliver long-term investment for a sustainable NHS.
"A record 7.7 million people are waiting for elective care, emergency department performance has deteriorated, and those waiting for tests or to begin treatment are incurring dangerous delays - all impacted by the shortage of registered nurses," Cullen wrote in a letter this week. Professor Philip Banfield, chair of the BMA council, says his main concern is yet another new health secretary, after four others in the last two years. "It would be disastrous if the revolving door of health secretaries was responsible for the failure of talks and further strike action," he said this week, so getting to grips with the brief quickly and effectively will be one of Atkins' key challenges.
The fact that her appointment comes as Britain enters its most challenging health period of every year - the winter months - only adds to this pressure to move fast.
How Atkins fares with this challenge will quickly be seen over the coming weeks. As someone who claims she values integrity, decency, respect and professionalism, she has certainly set her own bar suitably high.
