Sir Keir Starmer’s new cabinet were called to Downing Street to be confirmed in office, photographed and then sent out across Whitehall to take control of the departments they will now run.
There they were met by their respective permanent secretaries, who have spent the election campaign preparing to put Labour’s manifesto commitments into practice.
So what do the in-trays of the main ministers in Starmer’s new government look like?
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The economy
Chancellor Rachel Reeves
Age 45
Seat Leeds West & Pudsey
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In the run-up to the election, Rachel Reeves consistently warned that Labour was in line to inherit “the worst set of economic circumstances since World War Two” (Mehreen Khan writes). But in fact, as she enters the Treasury today, much like Gordon Brown in 1997, she looks to be taking over an economy that has grown. After an anaemic performance and brief recession in 2023, the UK economy expanded by 0.7 per cent of GDP in the first three months of the year, its fastest pace since 2022 and the best in the G7.
But it is not all good news. Unlike Brown, Reeves is inheriting an economy facing deep structural challenges where the potential growth of the economy has been declining at a startling rate. In 1997, the UK economy grew by 4.9 per cent of GDP — this year it is on course to expand at a rate of 0.7 per cent. Over the past 24 years, the potential growth of the economy has more than halved from about 3 per cent a year to just above 1 per cent of GDP, according to Deutsche Bank.
Reeves’s overriding priority is to beat pessimistic growth projections. She wants to boost the economy with state and private investment along with supply-side reforms such as planning. However, if successful, these initiatives will take time to filter through into tax receipts while pressure on Reeves to increase public sector spending will grow. She has little room to manoeuvre on debt, which is just shy of 100 per cent of GDP, the highest since the 1960s.
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Levelling up and housing
Deputy prime minister and levelling-up secretary Angela Rayner
Age 44
Seat Ashton-under-Lyne
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Angela Rayner is Starmer’s official deputy with a sprawling brief covering some of the party’s biggest priorities in government (Oliver Wright writes).
Top of her list will be housing. Labour has promised to rip up the current planning rules within the first few months of government in an attempt to kickstart housebuilding and promote economic growth. But such changes will meet fierce local opposition, particularly around plans to make it easier to build on the green belt.
There could also be rows ahead over proposals to make it harder to block infrastructure projects such as nuclear power stations and new onshore wind farms. Labour has pledged to publish draft legislation on workers rights within a hundred days. The plans are likely to lead to a battle between business groups who are worried they will impose unnecessary costs and the unions who already think it does not go far enough.
Other issues she will have to tackle include the crisis in council funding with the risk that more local authorities will become technically bankrupt in the coming months.
She has previously clashed with Starmer and after he tried to demote her in 2021 she emerged with an expanded job title. Although relations are much improved, any fresh tensions between the two could set the tone of politics. The remit of Rayner’s department covering local government and housing, particularly whether gets her own “office of the deputy prime minister”, will be one of Starmer’s key early decisions.
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The NHS
Health secretary Wes Streeting
Age 41
Seat Ilford North
Wes Streeting clung on to his Ilford North seat by only 528 votes after a challenge by a pro-Gaza independent (Eleanor Hayward writes).
More tough battles will follow; in his first statement as health secretary, Streeting said the NHS is “broken” and he will have to take on unions and managers. The most pressing item in his in-tray is reaching a pay deal with striking junior doctors; the British Medical Association is adamant they will not accept less than 35 per cent, and Labour is adamant it cannot afford this. Without ending the strikes, there’s little hope of making a significant dent in NHS waiting lists of 7.6 million.
Sorting out the mess of GPs and NHS dentists will also be essential to repaying the electorate’s faith: Labour is promising more appointments within weeks. But Streeting is going to have to achieve all this without a major cash boost. Labour need to present a coherent long-term plan for social care: it’s an issue that successive governments have kicked into the long grass.
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Schools
Education secretary Bridget Phillipson
Age 40
Seat Houghton & Sunderland South
Bridget Phillipson will be in charge of bringing in Labour’s most eye-catching policy: VAT on private school fees (Nicola Woolcock writes).
The details of how and when will be as much down to the Treasury as her new department. Labour claims the policy will raise £1.6 billion, which it will use to fund 6,500 extra state school teachers. This hints at the myriad problems in her in-tray, recruitment and retention being a hefty one. Only half the targeted number of trainee secondary teachers were recruited in England last year and 17 per cent of the required number of physics teachers. Labour may raise the money to recruit more teachers, but how will it convince people to train and remain? Even 6,500 extra teachers equates to less than one new teacher for every three schools.
Teacher pay could prove a big headache as will the wider issue of funding — both for schools and universities, which have had tuition fees effectively frozen for more than a decade. Teaching unions have already welcomed Labour’s victory but say funding is the top priority as some schools are falling down.
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The small boats crisis
Home secretary Yvette Cooper
Age 55
Seat Pontefract, Castleford & Knottingley
The biggest challenge facing Yvette Cooper is the small boats crisis (Matt Dathan writes). Nearly 14,000 migrants have arrived in small boats this year — 21 per cent higher than last year and 7 per cent more than the previous record-breaking year of 2022.
As we enter the busiest three months of the year for crossings, Cooper will have no time to waste to tackle the small boats crisis. Labour will scrap the Rwanda policy and instead focus on targeting the criminal gangs behind the crossings, setting up a new border security command incorporating a 1,000-strong workforce made up of MI5 agents, border officers, police, specialist investigators and prosecutors.
Net migration is already forecast to fall after hitting a record high of 764,000 but Labour has pledged to link immigration policy to a skills strategy to help reduce firms’ reliance on foreign labour. Cooper is planning to restore faith in policing by introducing an overhaul of standards to introduce mandatory nationwide vetting.
Mission-based government
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden
Age 59
Seat Wolverhampton South East
The man who as Labour’s election co-ordinator helped to mastermind Thursday’s election victory will have a critical role in the next government as minister for the Cabinet Office (Oliver Wright writes). In practice his job will be as Starmer’s trusted fixer, negotiating disputes between ministers and departments and ensuring that the prime minister’s writ runs across Whitehall.
Among the pressing problems will be trying to replicate Labour’s plans in opposition for “mission-based government” in practice. Many of Labour’s five missions cut across departmental boundaries and McFadden’s job will be to ensure that other cabinet ministers work collaboratively rather than representing their own interests.
International relations
Foreign secretary David Lammy
Age 51
Seat Tottenham
With the prospect of a hard-right government in France and a second Trump presidency in the autumn, Britain’s allies believe the pressure will be on Labour to assume a leading role in Nato and Europe over the war in Ukraine (Larisa Brown writes).
David Lammy, who has previously called Donald Trump a “neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath” and described Marine Le Pen, whose National Rally party lead in the first round of voting in France’s national elections, as toxic and malevolent, will be keen to build ties with both teams while persuading allies to stay the course to defeat President Putin. He will have to grapple with ceasefire negotiations in Gaza and the risk of the war in the Middle East expanding to Lebanon, as well as helping Keir Starmer to make a decision on when to recognise a Palestinian state.
Starmer promised to do so if elected but he is understood to be cautious about opening up a dividing line with the Biden administration so early in his premiership, with the US not likely to recognise a Palestinian state anytime soon. Lammy, who travelled to Israel and neighbouring countries earlier this year, has criticised both sides of the conflict, although he has come under criticism for appearing to back war crimes prosecutions against Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.
Defence
Defence secretary John Healey
Age 64
Seat Rawmarsh & Conisbrough
John Healey will spend his first week in office at the Nato summit in Washington DC, where eastern European allies will advocate that alliance members should be spending at least 3 per cent of GDP on defence (Larisa Brown writes).
Labour will be under pressure to establish a timeline for how it will increase its own defence spending from 2.3 per cent to 2.5 per cent (as promised in its manifesto), as well as whether to back calls for a new even higher target. The war in Ukraine is set to dominate Healey’s first days in office and he is likely to visit military leaders in the country before heading anywhere else. He will need to decide whether to restart British military training missions of Ukrainian troops inside Ukraine.
Top of the agenda will be a major strategic defence review which Labour has promised, and as part of that Healey will have to decide whether to reverse cuts to troop numbers at a time when the army is its smallest since the Napoleonic era.
Prisons
Justice secretary Shabana Mahmood
Age 43
Seat Birmingham Ladywood
Immediate decisions will have to be made on dealing with the overcrowding crisis in prisons, which are just days away from being completely full (Matt Dathan writes). The Ministry of Justice and Home Office have drawn up a list of further emergency measures that will be presented to Shabana Mahmood on how to immediately ease pressure on the prison estate. These will include measures such as lowering the automatic release point for non-violent offenders from the current 50 per cent to between 40 and 45 per cent.
Labour is likely to retain the current emergency early release scheme, which allows prisoners to be freed up to 70 days early. In the medium term, Labour is expected to bring back plans to reform sentencing laws that were scrapped due to the early election, which would effectively end custodial sentences of less than 12 months. In the longer term, Labour wants to overhaul planning rules to fast-track the construction of 12,000 prison places. There are challenges across the criminal justice system such as huge backlogs in the courts.
Employment and benefits
Work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall
Age 53
Seat Leicester West
With the cost of sickness benefits projected to top £60 billion a year by the end of the parliament, Starmer’s ability to increase spending on public services could be severely curtailed (Chris Smyth writes).
Kendall has vowed to stem this increase through making JobCentres work more closely with the NHS and the prize is huge — a recent study estimated that reversing three quarters of the increase in sickness since the pandemic could boost tax revenues by £57 billion through lower benefit payments and higher employment. But rapid improvements in the nation’s health will be difficult and Kendall is likely to face stark choices about limiting levels or eligibility of benefits if she wants to see rapid improvements.
Transport
Transport secretary Louise Haigh
Age 36
Seat Sheffield Heeley
The first thing that Louise Haigh will need to tackle is the drivers’ dispute on the railways (Ben Clatworthy writes). Labour has promised to dramatically improve the service on the railways, and settling the two-year-long row with drivers over pay is one of the quickest fixes. It is believed that Labour has already held detailed discussions with Aslef, the divers’ union, and it is possible that the broad framework of an agreement has already been sketched out.
The rail industry needs attention and work will need to begin to establish the Great British Railways, the new body that will control a railway in public ownership. Decisions on the future of HS2 will also need to be made, including finalising plans for upgrading connectivity in the north.
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Energy
Energy secretary Ed Miliband
Age 54
Seat Doncaster North
Ed Miliband is expected to lift a de facto ban on onshore wind farms (Adam Vaughan writes). While that step will be quick, it will take longer to set up the government’s new public energy company, which will be based in Scotland and have £8.3 billion to spend this parliament. The energy secretary will inherit a headache from his predecessor, who lost a legal challenge over the UK’s ability to hit its climate targets. He will be expected to produce a new 2035 emissions target for UN talks by February.
Farming
Environment secretary Steve Reed
Age 60
Seat Streatham & Croydon North
With farmers still reeling from an incredibly wet winter, Reed is not expected to shake up the £2.4 billion annual farming subsidy regime (Adam Vaughan writes). However, he is expected to produce a framework for how land is used. Addressing water pollution will be a more daunting challenge. If the regulator Ofwat trims investment to curb households’ bill rises, that could prove a dilemma for Reed, given his promise of cleaning up waterways.
Other key appointments
Chief secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones
Attorney-general (will become a life peer) Richard Hermer KC
Culture secretary Lisa Nandy
Science and innovation secretary Peter Kyle
Business secretary Jonathan Reynolds
Northern Ireland secretary Hilary Benn
Scottish secretary Ian Murray
Welsh secretary Jo Stevens
Leader of the House of Commons Lucy Powell
Leader of the House of Lords Baroness Smith of Basildon
