Minister of state (United Kingdom)


A minister of state is a mid-tier minister of the Crown in the UK government.

Hierarchy

Ministers of State are junior to the Prime Minister and Secretaries of State, but senior to a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State and Parliamentary Private Secretary. The office is defined in the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 as "...a member of Her Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom who neither has charge of any public department nor holds any other of the offices specified in Schedule 2 to this Act or any office in respect of which a salary is payable out of money provided by Parliament under section 3 of the Ministerial and other Salaries Act 1975".

History

The designation was first made in 1941 for Lord Beaverbrook, who was a member of the War Cabinet and was tasked with creating the Ministry of Production. His successors were effectively Ministers without Portfolio, but this changed in 1950 when the first junior minister was appointed to that designation, in the Foreign Office, to release some burden from the then-Foreign Secretary.

Duties

Ministers of State take charge of a particular part of their department and undertake specific delegated duties. To help to identify these duties, since the 1970s Ministers of State have often been granted a courtesy title which includes the word "for".

Current Ministers of State

The current Ministers of State are:HM Treasury

Historic Ministers of State