Justine Greening

Early life

Greening was born in Rotherham, where she attended Oakwood Comprehensive School. She studied Business Economics and Accounting at the University of Southampton, graduating with a first class honours degree in 1990. She obtained an Executive MBA from the London Business School in 2000. Before entering parliament, she trained and qualified as an accountant, before working as an accountant/finance manager for, amongst others, PricewaterhouseCoopers, GlaxoSmithKline and Centrica.

Political career

Greening contested the constituency of Ealing, Acton & Shepherd's Bush in 2001, finishing second with a reduced share of the vote for the Conservatives. She won the seat of Putney in the 2005 general election on 5 May 2005. Greening won 15,497 votes (42.4% of the vote) giving her a majority of 1,766 (4.8%). She unseated Tony Colman, who had held the seat for Labour since defeating David Mellor in 1997.

As the first Conservative elected on the evening of the election, her victory was the first real sign that the Conservative Party was to reduce the Labour Government's majority and begin to recover from the landslide defeats of the 1997 and 2001 general elections. Michael Howard, who had visited Putney to give a speech on his first day as Conservative Leader, returned there on the morning after the election to congratulate Putney Conservatives and give the speech in which he announced his intention to step down. She was the youngest female Conservative MP in the House of Commons until Chloe Smith was elected to Parliament on 12 October 2009.

Greening was appointed a vice-chair (with responsibility for youth) of the Conservative Party on 15 December 2005, having earlier that year been appointed a member of the Work and Pensions Committee. In July 2007 following a shadow ministerial reshuffle, she was promoted to be a Junior Shadow Minister for The Treasury.

In January 2009 following a further shadow ministerial reshuffle, Greening was promoted to Shadow Minister for London, within the Communities and Local Government Team with responsibility for Local Government Finance. Within this brief, she focussed on transport and local community benefits.

In March 2010 she was put in charge of co-ordinating the Conservative campaign for the 2010 general election in London. She held the post of Economic Secretary to the Treasury from 13 May 2010 to 14 October 2011.

Transport Secretary

In October 2011 she was appointed Secretary of State for Transport and was sworn of the Privy Council.

Greening represents the London constituency of Putney and had always campaigned against a third runway at Heathrow Airport. In the run up to the 2012 Cabinet reshuffle Greening said it would be difficult to serve in a Cabinet which was in favour of a third runway.

International Development Secretary

On 4 September 2012 she was replaced by Patrick McLoughlin at the Department for Transport and became Secretary of State for International Development. The move was attacked by Boris Johnson. As Secretary of State for International Development, Greening became a member of the National Security Council.

Education Secretary

Greening was appointed Secretary of State for Education and Minister for Women and Equalities by Theresa May on 14 July 2016, replacing Nicky Morgan in both roles. Since taking these posts, she has announced the creation of social mobility 'opportunity areas' and the approval of additional free schools. She has also spoken in favour of creating new grammar schools and retaining university tuition fees.

After the June 2017 General Election, when the Conservatives formed a minority government, and she held her Putney constituency albeit with a loss in vote share of 9.7%, she retained the same ministerial positions.

Personal life

In June 2016, Greening revealed on Twitter that she was in a "happy same-sex relationship". Referring to the EU membership referendum, she added: "I campaigned for Stronger In but sometimes you're better off out!"

Styles