Sajid Javid
Sir Sajid Javid is a British former politician who served as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care from June 2021 to July 2022, having previously served as Home Secretary from 2018 to 2019 and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2019 to 2020. A member of the Conservative Party, he was Member of Parliament for Bromsgrove between 2010 and 2024.
Born in Rochdale into a Pakistani family, Javid was raised largely in Bristol. He studied Economics and Politics at the University of Exeter, where he joined the Conservative Party. Working in banking, he rose to become a managing director at Deutsche Bank. He was elected to the House of Commons in May 2010. Under the coalition government of David Cameron he was a Junior Treasury Minister before being promoted to Cameron's Cabinet as Culture Secretary, following Maria Miller's resignation. Following the 2015 general election, Cameron promoted Javid to Business Secretary.
Javid was a prominent supporter of the unsuccessful Britain Stronger in Europe campaign for the UK to remain in the European Union. Following the 2016 referendum vote to leave the European Union, he went on to serve under Cameron's successor Prime Minister Theresa May, as Communities Secretary from 2016 to 2018. When Amber Rudd resigned as a result of the Windrush scandal in 2018, Javid was appointed as her successor as Home Secretary, becoming the first British Asian and first Muslim to hold one of the Great Offices of State. Following May's resignation, Javid stood for election as Leader of the Conservative Party in the 2019 leadership contest, finishing in fourth place. The successful candidate, Boris Johnson, appointed him Chancellor of the Exchequer in his first Cabinet. Javid resigned as Chancellor during the February 2020 cabinet reshuffle after refusing a demand from Johnson and his chief adviser Dominic Cummings that he dismiss his advisers, and was succeeded by Rishi Sunak.
In June 2021, following the resignation of Matt Hancock, he was reappointed to Johnson's cabinet as Health Secretary. This made him a prominent figure in the UK government response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which he supported an end to most generalised public health restrictions, such as face mask mandates until the emergence of the highly transmissible Delta cron hybrid variant from June 2021 until the end of March 2022, and he also expanded the COVID-19 vaccination programme in the United Kingdom. Following the Chris Pincher scandal, Javid resigned as Health Secretary on 5 July 2022, and was the first of 62 Conservative MPs to resign their government positions during the government crisis, which culminated in Johnson's own resignation. He returned to the backbenches and was succeeded by Steve Barclay. Javid stood to replace Johnson in the July–September 2022 Conservative Party leadership election but withdrew from the race before he could be nominated, subsequently endorsing Liz Truss. He later endorsed Sunak in the October 2022 Conservative Party leadership election, and stood down as an MP at the 2024 general election. He was appointed Knight Bachelor in the 2024 New Year Honours for political and public service. Javid has been the chair of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust since July 2025.
Early life
Sajid Javid was born on 5 December 1969 in Rochdale, one of five sons of Pakistani parents, who had immigrated to the United Kingdom in the 1960s. His family were Punjabi Muslim farmers belonging to the Arain caste, from the Rajana village in Toba Tek Singh District, within the Sandal Bar region of central Punjab.His father worked as a bus driver. His mother did not speak English until she had been in the UK for ten years. His family moved from Lancashire to Stapleton Road, Bristol, as his parents took over a shop there, and the family lived in a two-bedroom flat above it. Javid is able to hold a conversation in broken Punjabi. Despite having an Islamic upbringing, Javid no longer practises any religion. However he still identifies as being a Muslim, claiming to be "the first Muslim Home Secretary to be invited" to an iftar party in the House of Commons.
As a teenager, Javid developed an interest in financial markets, following the Thatcher government's privatisations. He says that, at the age of fourteen, he borrowed £500 from a bank to invest in shares and became a regular reader of the Financial Times.
From 1981 to 1986, Javid attended Downend School, a state comprehensive near Bristol. At school it was recommended that he should be a TV repairman. Javid has said he was told that he could not study maths at O Level so he had to get his father to pay for it. When he later witnessed a video showing an assault on a Syrian refugee, he remarked that it was reminiscent of bullying he had experienced at school; Javid said he faced racial abuse when younger, being called a 'Paki', and having faced abuse from "National Front skinheads". Speaking in 2014, Javid said that while at school: "I was naughty, more interested in watching Grange Hill than homework". After being told by his school that he could only study two A Levels when he believed he needed three to go to university, Javid subsequently attended Filton Technical College from 1986 to 1988, and finally the University of Exeter from 1988 to 1991, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and politics.
Javid was a trustee of the London Early Years Foundation, a governor of Normand Croft Community School, and has led an expedition to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, the highest mountain in Africa, to show his support of Help the Aged.
Early political activism
At university, he joined the Conservative Party. In 1990, aged 20, Javid attended the annual Conservative Party Conference for the first time and campaigned against the Thatcher government's decision that year to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. He was handing out leaflets against the policy when he first met TV presenter Jeremy Paxman. He has since said that Paxman first interviewed him at that same conference.From 1992 until 1996, he lived in New York City and rose to become the youngest vice-president of Chase Manhattan Bank and during this period, he had a spell as an aide to Republican nominee Rudy Giuliani's successful 1993 New York mayoral campaign.
In 1998, Javid was selected as prospective parliamentary candidate for Brent North. However, he later withdrew.
He worked as an adviser to Conservative MP Gary Streeter, the then Shadow Secretary of State for International Development.
Banking career
Javid had an 18-year City career, during which he rose to become a board member of Deutsche Bank International. Javid joined Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City immediately after graduation, working mostly in Latin America and overselling Mexican government bonds prior to the Mexican peso crisis. Aged 25, he became a vice president. A 2012 article says he was vice-chairman, although his own website, among others, affirms the more probable claim that he was a vice president, a more junior role at the bank. He returned to London in 1997, and later joined Deutsche Bank as a director in 2000. In 2004, he became a managing director at Deutsche Bank and, the following year, global head of Emerging Markets Structuring. He was also an Advisor to Lufthansa in Germany.In 2007, he relocated to Singapore as head of Deutsche Bank's credit trading, equity convertibles, commodities and private equity businesses in Asia, and was appointed a board member of Deutsche Bank International Limited.
He left Deutsche Bank in 2009 to pursue a career in politics. His earnings at Deutsche Bank would have been roughly £3 million a year at the time he left and the Evening Standard once estimated his career change would have required him to take a 98% pay cut.
Javid applied for and held non-domicile status for six years during his banking career which allowed him to avoid paying tax in the UK on his overseas earnings.
Political career
Member of Parliament
On 28 May 2009, the sitting MP for Bromsgrove, Julie Kirkbride, announced that she would be standing down at the next general election in light of the expenses scandal; Kirkbride had represented the constituency since 1997. Her resignation was confirmed in December 2009, after she attempted to withdraw it.File:From left to right Stuart Popham and Sajid Javid MP.jpg|thumb|right|Stuart Popham and Javid at the 2011 Conservative Party Conference in Manchester
After a selection contest held by the Bromsgrove Conservative Association on 6 February 2010, in which he received over 70% of the votes cast by its members, Javid was announced as the official Conservative Party parliamentary candidate for the 2010 general election. The other candidates up for selection included Ruth Davidson and Tina Stowell. On 6 May 2010, Javid received 22,558 votes, winning the seat by a majority of 11,308 votes. In terms of the number of votes cast in the constituency, this was an increase on the majority of 10,080 at the previous general election, though was a reduction when compared both to the actual number of votes his predecessor had received and to the Conservatives' percentage share of the vote. The constituency's boundaries had reformed prior to the election.
In the 2019 general election, Javid received 34,408 votes and was returned as the MP for Bromsgrove, receiving 63.4% of the vote and increasing his already sizeable majority to 23,106 over Labour.
Political recognition
According to former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, those MPs first elected in 2010 "are the best new MPs for over thirty years", and he identified Javid as one of six Conservative MPs that he believed had "already made an impact in the first term". Javid was also one of six new MPs profiled by the Financial Times, and was named as the Newcomer of 2010 by the ConservativeHome blog.In October 2012, Iain Dale in The Daily Telegraph included Javid in his list of "Top 100 most influential figures from the Right". Dale wrote: "His fast rise up the greasy pole into George Osborne's inner circle is not only proof of this man's ambition but also his talent." Nicholas Watt in The Guardian also suggested that Javid could rise to the top.
In The Times 2014 right-wing power list, Javid moved up 18 places to No. 8, with the article stating that he had emerged "as the senior member of the 2010 intake" and that if "the Tories want to jump a generation, then a Javid leadership candidacy would provide the opportunity." The 2014 GG2 Power List ranked Javid as the most influential British Asian, and, at the accompanying GG2 Leadership Awards event on 5 November 2014, then-Prime Minister David Cameron described Javid as "the brilliant Asian man who I asked to join the Cabinet" and said that "I want to hear that title 'Prime Minister' followed by a British Asian name." In July 2014, Forbes magazine compared Javid to Barack Obama and suggested that Javid could become the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
In January 2015, Javid was awarded the Politician of the Year award at the British Muslim Awards. In November 2017, Sajid Javid won Patchwork Foundation's MP of the Year Award.
In June 2018, a polling of Tory activists on ConservativeHome showed Javid was popular as a potential party leader. The poll is seen as a reliable barometer of grassroots opinion, although it is known to shift quickly. A separate poll of Conservative Party members by YouGov in July 2018 also showed he had high levels of support to become party leader. YouGov found Javid reached the height of the charts on two measures; with 64% thinking he is "up to the job" and 69% calling him "competent".