Grant Shapps
Sir Grant Shapps is a British politician who served as secretary of state for defence from August 2023 to July 2024. Shapps previously served in various cabinet posts, including Conservative Party co-chairman, transport secretary, home secretary, business secretary, and energy secretary under prime ministers David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. A member of the Conservative Party, he served as the member of parliament for Welwyn Hatfield from 2005 to 2024. He was defeated and lost his seat in the 2024 general election.
Shapps was first promoted to the Shadow Cabinet as shadow minister for housing and planning in 2007. Following David Cameron's appointment as prime minister in 2010, Shapps was appointed minister of state for housing and local government. In the 2012 cabinet reshuffle he was promoted to the Cabinet as co-chairman of the Conservative Party and minister without portfolio. In May 2015, he was demoted from the Cabinet, becoming minister of state for international development. In November 2015, he stood down from this post due to his handling of allegations of bullying within the Conservative Party.
In 2019 Shapps supported Boris Johnson's successful 2019 Conservative leadership bid. Upon becoming prime minister, Johnson appointed Shapps transport secretary. Since Shapps assumed the role it has exercised greater influence than under his predecessors, with the effective nationalisation of the Northern Trains franchise, the Williams–Shapps Review to move from a rail franchise system to concessionary Great British Railways public body, and the Integrated Rail Plan published in 2021 which sets out the long-term strategy for rail in northern England and the Midlands.
In September 2022, Johnson's successor, Liz Truss, dismissed Shapps as transport secretary and he returned to the backbenches. In October 2022, amid a government crisis, Truss appointed Shapps as home secretary, replacing Suella Braverman. After Braverman was reappointed as home secretary when Rishi Sunak became prime minister, Shapps was appointed secretary of state for business, energy, and industrial strategy, succeeding Jacob Rees-Mogg. He was then appointed energy secretary in February 2023, and later defence secretary in August 2023, holding the position until being unseated at the 2024 general election.
Early life and education
Grant Shapps was born on 14 September 1968 in Croxley Green, Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, the son of Tony Shapps, who ran a cinematographic and photographic equipment business, and Beryl. His family is Jewish. Grant's brother, André Shapps, is a musician who was a member of Big Audio Dynamite between 1994 and 1998, playing keyboards. Their cousin Mick Jones was a key figure in British punk rock of the late 1970s and a founding member of both the Clash and Big Audio Dynamite.Grant Shapps was educated at Yorke Mead Primary School, Watford Grammar School for Boys, where he achieved 5 'O' Levels, and at West Herts College in Watford, where he studied business and finance. He subsequently completed a business and finance course at Manchester Polytechnic, and received a Higher National Diploma.
Shapps was also National President of the Jewish youth organisation BBYO. In 1989, he was involved in a car crash in Kansas, United States, that left him in a coma for a week.
Business ventures
Shapps started his working life as a photocopier sales representative. In 1990, aged 22, Shapps founded PrintHouse Corporation, a design, print, website creation and marketing business in London, based on a collapsed printing business he purchased from the receiver. He stepped down as a director in 2009, but remained the majority shareholder.Shapps founded a web publishing business, How To Corp Limited, with his wife while he was recovering from cancer. The company marketed business publications and software. The existence of at least three people who allegedly provided testimonials for the company has been questioned. Shapps stood down as a director in July 2008; his wife remained as director until the company was dissolved in 2014.
In September 2012, Google blacklisted 19 of Shapps's business websites for violating rules on copyright infringement related to the web scraping-based TrafficPayMaster software sold by them. Shapps's web marketing business's 20/20 Challenge publication also drew criticism. It cost $497 and promised customers earnings of $20,000 in 20 days. Upon purchase, the "toolkit" was revealed to be an ebook, advising the user to create their own toolkit and recruit 100 "Joint Venture Partners" to resell it for a share of the profits.
Shapps's use of the names Michael Green, Corinne Stockheath and Sebastian Fox attracted media attention in 2012. He denied having used a pseudonym after entering parliament and, in 2014, threatened legal action against a constituent who had stated on Facebook that he had. In February 2015, he told LBC Radio: "I don't have a second job and have never had a second job while being an MP. End of story."
In March 2015, Shapps said he had made an error in his interview with LBC and was "mistaken over the dates" of his outside employment. He said he had "over-firmly denied" having a second job. David Cameron defended Shapps, saying he had made a mistake and it was time to "move on". In March 2015, Dean Archer, the constituent previously threatened with legal action by Shapps, threatened Shapps with legal action.
Political career
After deciding to go into politics, Shapps wrote to Watford Conservative MP Tristan Garel-Jones, who invited him to the House of Commons and gave Shapps advice. Shapps made his first foray into politics in 1990, when he was a Conservative candidate for a Labour-held seat in Old Moat ward on Manchester City Council. Shapps finished in a distant second place.In 1994, Shapps stood as a Conservative candidate for the two-member St Andrews ward in the London Borough of Brent local elections, but was unsuccessful in being returned as a councillor, with Labour narrowly holding both seats.
Parliamentary candidacy
Shapps unsuccessfully contested North Southwark and Bermondsey at the 1997 general election, finishing third with 6.9% of the vote behind the incumbent Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes and the Labour Party candidate.Shapps stood for Welwyn Hatfield at the 2001 general election, finishing second with 40.4% of the vote behind the incumbent Labour MP Melanie Johnson. He was reselected to fight Welwyn Hatfield in 2002 and continued his local campaigning over the next four years.
Member of Parliament
At the 2005 general election Shapps was elected as MP for Welwyn Hatfield, winning with 49.6% and a majority of 5,946.Shapps publicly backed David Cameron's bid for the leadership of the Conservative Party, seconding Cameron's nomination papers. Upon Cameron's election as party leader Shapps was appointed vice chairman of the Conservative Party with responsibility for campaigning.
He was a member of the Public Administration Select Committee between May 2005 and February 2007.
At the 2010 general election, Shapps was re-elected as MP for Welwyn Hatfield with an increased vote share of 57% of the vote and an increased majority of 17,423. He was again re-elected at the 2015 general election, with a decreased vote share of 50.4% and a decreased majority of 12,153.
Shapps was opposed to the UK's withdrawal from the European Union prior to the 2016 referendum and voted Remain. However, following the referendum, Shapps announced he would support the result and vote to trigger Article 50. He also called on other Remain supporting MPs to do the same, arguing that voting down Article 50 to prevent Brexit would be "creating a situation which no-one wants be it MPs, voters or business" and that Parliament would contradict the fact it had granted the public a referendum on Britain's EU membership if it was not prepared to respect the result.
Shapps was again re-elected at the snap 2017 general election, with an increased vote share of 51% and a decreased majority of 7,369.
In October 2017, Shapps called for Theresa May's resignation, saying that the party could not "bury its head in the sand" in the wake of the June election. Shapps said that 30 MPs and "one or two" Cabinet ministers agreed with him that Theresa May should resign.
At the 2019 general election, Shapps was again re-elected, with an increased vote share of 52.6% and an increased majority of 10,955.
Shadow housing minister
In June 2007, Shapps became shadow minister for housing and planning.He was Shadow Housing Minister during the period of the last four Labour government housing ministers. During this period of opposition, he argued in favour of a community-up approach to solving the housing crisis and warned against top-down Whitehall-driven housing targets, which he believed had failed in the past.
In May 2008, Shapps was cited as one of several shadow ministers who had received cash from firms linked to their portfolios. The donors were originally recruited by Michael Gove who previously held the shadow housing portfolio. The Conservative Party said shadow ministers had not been influenced by donations. "Some Conservative policy on housing is actually against the policy of the donors", said a Conservative spokesman. Shadow ministers are allowed to receive donations from organisations covered by their brief as long as the person has a company in the UK or lives in the UK. The Commissioner exonerated all Shadow Cabinet members involved.
In April 2009, Shapps launched the Conservative Party's ninth green paper on policy, "Strong Foundations". In early 2010 Shapps published a series of six speeches in a pamphlet called "Home Truths".
Minister of state for housing and local government
In May 2010,after the formation of the Cameron–Clegg coalition, Shapps became minister of state for housing and local government within the Communities and Local Government department and immediately repealed Home Information Pack legislation. He chaired the Cross-Ministerial Working Group on Homelessness, which includes ministers from eight government departments. The group introduced 'No Second Night Out', a policy designed to prevent rough sleeping nationwide.As minister of state for housing, Shapps promoted plans for flexible rent and controversially ended automatic lifetime social tenancies. He also introduced the New Homes Bonus, which rewarded councils for building more homes. He denied claims that changes in Housing Benefit rules would be unfair claiming that ordinary people could no longer afford some of the homes paid for by the £24bn Housing Benefit bill. Shapps championed Tenant Panels.
At the 2011 party conference, Shapps backed the expansion of right to buy with the income being spent on replacing the sold housing with new affordable housing on a one-for-one basis.
In 2012, Shapps launched StreetLink – a website and phone app for the public to bring help to rough sleepers.