Amber Rudd
Amber Augusta Rudd is a British former politician who served as Home Secretary from 2016 to 2018 and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from 2018 to 2019. She was a Member of Parliament for Hastings and Rye, first elected in 2010, representing the Conservative Party, and stood down from parliament in 2019. She identifies herself as a one-nation conservative, and has been associated with both socially liberal and economically liberal policies.
Rudd was born in Marylebone and studied history at the University of Edinburgh. Rudd worked as an investment banker before being elected to the House of Commons for Hastings and Rye in East Sussex in 2010, defeating incumbent Labour MP Michael Foster. Rudd served in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change from 2015 to 2016 in the Cameron Government, where she worked on renewable energy resources and climate change mitigation. She previously served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Energy and Climate Change from 2014 to 2015.
She was appointed Home Secretary in the May government on 13 July 2016, and given the additional role of Minister for Women and Equalities in January 2018. Rudd was the third female home secretary, the fifth woman to hold one of the Great Offices of State and the fastest-rising politician to a Great Office of State since the Second World War. She resigned as Home Secretary in April 2018 in connection with the Windrush deportation scandal.
On 16 November 2018, Rudd was appointed Work and Pensions Secretary by Prime Minister Theresa May, succeeding Esther McVey. She was re-appointed by Boris Johnson on 24 July 2019 and succeeded Penny Mordaunt in her previous portfolio as Minister for Women and Equalities. On 7 September, Rudd resigned from his cabinet and resigned the Conservative whip in Parliament, to protest against Johnson's policy on Brexit and his decision to expel 21 Tory MPs. She announced on 30 October that she would be standing down as an MP at the next general election.
Early life and education
Rudd was born on 1 August 1963 in Marylebone, London, the fourth child of stockbroker Tony Rudd and magistrate Ethne Fitzgerald, daughter of Maurice Fitzgerald QC and Christine. Tony Rudd and Ethne Fitzgerald were married for 56 years. Through her mother, Rudd is a direct descendant of King Charles II and his mistress Barbara Palmer. Her elder brother Roland is a public relations executive, and was a prominent Labour supporter.She was educated at New Hall School, Cheltenham Ladies' College, a private school in Gloucestershire, and from 1979 to 1981 at Queen's College, London, a private day school for girls in London, followed by the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh where she read History.
Career
After graduating from university, she joined J.P. Morgan & Co., working in both London and New York.Rudd became a director of the investment company Lawnstone Limited at the age of 24 in January 1988, taking over from her sister and brother-in-law. Lawnstone became involved with Zinc Corporation, which was taken over by Monticello in 1999, before going into liquidation in 2001.
Rudd was a co-director of Monticello between 1999 and 2000, but the company was liquidated in 2003. Craig Murray has reported that Monticello "attracted many hundreds of investors... despite never appearing actually to do anything except pay its directors. Trawling through its documents at Companies House, I find it difficult to conclude that it was ever anything other than a share ramping scheme. After just over a year of existence it went bankrupt with over £1.2 million of debts and no important assets.
Between 1998 and 2000, she was also a director of two companies based in the Bahamas, Advanced Asset Allocation Fund and Advanced Asset Allocation Management.
Rudd helped to find extras for the film Four Weddings and a Funeral, for which she was credited as the "aristocracy co-ordinator", and appeared briefly in one of the church scenes in the film.
Parliamentary career
After she had stood at the 2005 general election as the Conservative candidate for the Labour-held seat of Liverpool Garston, Rudd's name was added to the Conservative A-List. Following her selection to contest the Hastings and Rye constituency in 2006, she moved to the Old Town in 2007. In the May 2010 general election, she was elected as the MP for Hastings and Rye with a majority of 1,993 votes. Shortly afterward she was elected to serve as a Conservative member on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee.Rudd was vice-chair of the Parliamentary committee on female genital mutilation, which campaigned against FGM and called for tougher legal penalties in the area. She championed the cause of sex equality as chairperson of the All-party parliamentary group for Sex Equality, which published a report on women in work. Rudd chaired a cross-party enquiry into unplanned pregnancies, which called for statutory sex-and-relationships education in all secondary schools. She has also called for a higher proportion of women in Cabinet.
In September 2012, she was made Parliamentary Private Secretary to the chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne. In October 2013, she became an assistant government whip. In July 2014, Rudd was appointed Minister for the Department for Energy and Climate Change.
Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change
Following the 2015 general election, where she held her seat with an increased majority, she was promoted as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. In May 2015, she was appointed as a member of the Privy Council.In March 2015, she published England's first fuel poverty strategy in more than a decade, pledging to improve the Energy Performance Certificate of all fuel poor homes to Band C by 2030. She also passed legislation requiring energy suppliers to provide a £140 discount to certain vulnerable consumers over the winter and install energy efficiency measures.
In November 2015, she proposed that the UK's remaining coal-fired power stations would be shut by 2025 with their use restricted by 2023. "We need to build a new energy infrastructure, fit for the 21st century."
In July 2015, Craig Bennett of Friends of the Earth accused Rudd of hypocrisy in claiming to want to address climate change while at the same time, in his view, "dismantling an architecture of low-carbon policies carefully put together with cross-party agreement over the course of two parliaments". Rudd replied that " support must help technologies eventually stand on their own two feet, not encourage a permanent reliance on subsidy."
Rudd participated in ITV's Brexit referendum debate regarding the European Union. She campaigned for the Remain side alongside Nicola Sturgeon and Angela Eagle. They faced Gisela Stuart, Boris Johnson and Andrea Leadsom.
Home Secretary
When Theresa May became Prime Minister in July 2016, Rudd was appointed Home Secretary, thus becoming the fifth woman to hold one of the Great Offices of State, after Margaret Thatcher, Margaret Beckett, Jacqui Smith and May herself.In October 2016, she negated calls for Australian citizens to obtain easier access to live and work in the United Kingdom following the UK's departure from the European Union, which were supported by British Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary Boris Johnson, and Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop. Rudd also dismissed the idea that a free movement zone between British and Australian citizens – a measure supported by former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott – would be established upon leaving the European Union, stating "there are no plans to increase immigration from Australia...so I wouldn't envisage any change".
She was reappointed as Home Secretary after the 2017 general election, in which she retained her seat at Hastings and Rye by 346 votes.
In August 2017, Rudd replied to an email hoaxer posing as the recently appointed Downing Street director of communications, Robbie Gibb, revealing that "positive announcements" were imminent. The hoaxer used Rudd's public domain parliamentary email address but she replied using her private email, which is not secure.
In September 2017 on The Andrew Marr Show, Rudd accused Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson of trying to undermine the Prime Minister, Theresa May, calling him a 'back-seat driver'. She said to Andrew Marr: "I don't want him managing the Brexit process."
On 3 October 2017, during the Conservative Party Conference, it was reported that Rudd had hired Tory pollster Lynton Crosby to help her increase her majority in Hastings and Rye, amid speculation that she was planning to launch a bid for leadership of the party.
In November 2017, after U.S. president Donald Trump retweeted 3 anti-Muslim videos from the far right group Britain First, Rudd criticised Trump for promoting the content and argued that Britain First is a hateful organisation. Rudd further went on that relations between the U.S. and Britain are vital to the safety of both countries and have saved British lives.
On 29 April 2018, Rudd resigned as Home Secretary after misleading the Home Affairs Select Committee on deportation targets. Later in the same day, Sajid Javid was appointed as home secretary.
In September 2018, during an interview on BBC Two's Politics Live, Rudd was asked if she planned a comeback, to which she replied that she was "not without ambition".