Wes Streeting
Wesley Paul William Streeting is a British politician who has served as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care since 2024. A member of the Labour Party, he has been Member of Parliament for Ilford North since 2015.
Brought up in Stepney, London, Streeting attended Westminster City School. He read history at the University of Cambridge and was president of the Cambridge Students' Union from 2004 to 2005. He was president of the National Union of Students from 2008 to 2010. Streeting also worked for Progress, a Labour Party-related organisation, for a year before working in the public sector. In 2010 he was elected to Redbridge London Borough Council for Labour and became deputy leader of the council in May 2014. Streeting was elected to the House of Commons as MP for Ilford North at the 2015 general election and resigned as the council's deputy leader before standing down as a councillor in 2018. He was returned to Parliament at both the 2017 and 2019 general elections.
Following Keir Starmer's election as Leader of the Labour Party in the 2020 leadership election, Streeting joined the front bench as Shadow Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury in April 2020. He became Shadow Minister for Schools in October 2020 after the resignation of Margaret Greenwood before joining the shadow cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Child Poverty in the May 2021 shadow cabinet reshuffle. In the November 2021 shadow cabinet reshuffle, Streeting became, following a promotion by Starmer, Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, a position he remained in until July 2024. Following Labour's victory at the 2024 general election, Streeting was appointed Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in the Starmer ministry.
Early life and education
Wesley Paul William Streeting was born on 21 January 1983 in Stepney, London. His parents were teenagers when he was born. He has five brothers, a sister and a stepsister. His maternal grandfather was an armed robber who spent time in prison, and his grandmother became embroiled in his crimes and was incarcerated at HM Prison Holloway, where she met Christine Keeler. According to Streeting, they "stayed in touch, they became friends". His grandmother was released from prison to give birth to his mother at Whittington Hospital in London.Streeting's two grandfathers, both named Bill, were key figures in his youth. His maternal grandfather, Bill Crowley, was a frequently imprisoned criminal who was acquainted with the Kray twins. He often engaged his grandson in lively discussions about religion and politics. Streeting's paternal grandfather served in the Second World War in the Royal Navy and later in the merchant navy before becoming a civil engineer. He recalled: "He was the grandad I was closest to. He was a traditional working-class Tory."
Streeting grew up living in a council flat. He recalls Conservative Party politicians, particularly Ann Widdecombe, in the 1990s "denigrating single-parent families like mine, which I took quite personally". He was educated at Westminster City School, a comprehensive state school in Victoria, London. He went on to study history at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge, graduating in 2004. Streeting briefly left the Labour Party because he opposed its decision to enter the Iraq War.
Streeting came out as gay in his second year of university. He was elected President of Cambridge Students' Union for the 2004–05 academic year, a sabbatical officer role. As president he campaigned against the proposed closure of Cambridge University's architecture department. During his term as NUS president he opposed academic strikes, "Given the effects of the current economic climate on the graduate jobs market, students need industrial action by university staff like a hole in the head".
Career
Early career (2008–2010)
As President of the NUS, Streeting was a strong proponent of his predecessor Gemma Tumelty's proposed reforms to the NUS governance structures, which had been denounced and narrowly defeated by many left-wing groups in NUS as an attack on NUS democracy. His election was reported by The Guardian as "a move that will lend weight to the fight to modernise the union". As NUS President, Streeting was a non-executive director of the NUS's trading arm, NUS Services Ltd, and of Endsleigh Insurance.He was also a non-executive director of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, as well as the Higher Education academy, having served on their board as Vice President when he was also a non-executive director of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education. Shortly after his election as NUS President, Streeting was appointed as a member of the government's Youth Citizenship Commission, chaired by Professor Jonathan Tonge of the University of Liverpool, which published its report in June 2009. Streeting supported university tuition fees as president, consistent with UK government policy during the New Labour years.
In 2009, while President of the NUS, Streeting posted tweets about wanting to push the Daily Mail journalist Jan Moir 'under a train'.
Streeting worked for the Labour Party-related organisation Progress for a year. Progress was a pressure group created to support Tony Blair's New Labour in 1996 and continued to promote the thinking of the Blairite-Brownite wing of Labour until 2014. Progress was funded by David Sainsbury, Baron Sainsbury of Turville, and coincided with Blair's announcement that he would abolish the party's Clause IV commitment to old-style public ownership.
After completing his term as President of the NUS, Streeting served as Chief Executive of the Helena Kennedy Foundation, an educational charity that promotes access to higher education for students from further education colleges. He went on to serve as head of education at Stonewall, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights charity, where he led their Education for All campaign to tackle homophobia in schools.
He was subsequently a public sector consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers, which he gave up on election as a councillor, because Redbridge Council was a "current audit client" of the firm; this forced him to choose between keeping his job or forcing a second by-election. In 2010, shortly after leaving PwC, Streeting was appointed as Head of Policy and Strategic Communications for Oona King's unsuccessful bid to win the Labour Party's nomination to be its candidate in the 2012 London Mayoral election.
Council career (2010–2018)
In a July 2010 by-election, Streeting was elected for the Chadwell ward on Redbridge London Borough Council, having stood unsuccessfully for that council's Roding ward two months earlier. He held the Chadwell seat for Labour by 220 votes, winning with 31.5% of the vote on a 25.5% turnout. The by-election had been triggered by a previously elected candidate subsequently being found to be ineligible to serve on the council. Streeting was elected as Deputy Leader of the Labour Group in October 2011.Streeting sought re-election in 2014 to represent the Aldborough ward. At a public meeting of the Redbridge Citizens' Assembly on 6 May 2014, Streeting promised on behalf of his group that, if they won the election, they would not reduce the level of Council Tax support provided to low-income working-age residents. In May 2014, Labour took control of Redbridge Council for the first time and Streeting was appointed Deputy Leader of the council, with Jas Athwal as Leader. Once elected, the Labour council proceeded to cut the level of council tax support, so as to treble the amount of Council Tax paid by supported residents from April 2016; the council made a further reduction from April 2017, and made a third reduction from April 2018.
Streeting resigned as Deputy Leader in May 2015, shortly after being elected Member of Parliament for Ilford North. Whilst he remained a backbench councillor following his election to Parliament, he chose not to claim his councillor allowance. Streeting did not stand for re-election after being elected to Parliament, and ceased to be a councillor on 3 May 2018.
Parliamentary career
Backbenches (2015–2020)
At the 2015 general election, Streeting was elected to Parliament as MP for Ilford North with 43.9% of the vote and a majority of 589. After being elected to Parliament, Streeting was elected Honorary President of the British Youth Council. In April 2016 Streeting criticised the Labour Party for refusing a £30,000 donation from McDonald's. According to Labour, the refusal was due to the company's poor record on worker's rights and hostile stance towards trade unions. Streeting campaigned in favour of the United Kingdom remaining in the European Union in the run-up to the 2016 EU membership referendum. He later campaigned for a People's Vote, a campaign group calling for a public vote on the final Brexit deal between the UK and the European Union.At the snap 2017 general election, Streeting was re-elected as MP for Ilford North with an increased vote share of 57.8% and an increased majority of 9,639. Streeting is a vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism, a co-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Jews and a supporter of Labour Friends of Israel. He is also a co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims and a supporter of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East. In September 2018, he held the last in a series of London-wide consultations to create the Working Definition of Islamophobia. In July 2018, Streeting called for "targeted economic sanctions" against Israeli settlements in the West Bank in response to the Israeli government "grossly infringing on the human rights of Palestinians". In July 2019, Streeting was reported in the media as using abusive language towards a non-Jewish antisemitism campaigner.
Shortly before the 2019 general election, Streeting told a Labour First meeting that the party faced electoral oblivion in any snap poll due to the leadership's poor handling of Brexit and allegations of antisemitism. At the election, Streeting was again re-elected, with a decreased vote share of 50.5% and a decreased majority of 5,198. Following Labour's defeat in the general election, Streeting nominated Jess Phillips and Rosena Allin-Khan in the 2020 Labour Party leadership and deputy leadership elections, and, after Allin-Khan did not win, subsequently endorsed Ian Murray for the deputy leadership.