Anne-Marie Trevelyan has been named new Secretary of State for Transport in the Liz Truss Government – but who is she?
Travel Gossip has done a bit of Googling and here’s what we know so far…
She’s 53, divorced with two children. She was born in London, privately educated at St Paul’s Girls’ School, Hammersmith. She went to Oxford to study Mathematics – but while many of her Parliamentary colleagues went to the Uni, she was down the road at Oxford Polytechnic.
She’s a chartered accountant by trade, qualifying with Price Waterhouse (now PricewaterhouseCoopers) after gaining her degree.
Parliamentary career
She was first elected as Member of Parliament for Berwick-upon-Tweed in 2015. The constituency is large and predominantly rural, covering over 1,000 square miles of north Northumberland from Hartburn in the south, to the Scottish border. It includes large parts of Northumberland National Park, the Coquet Valley, Holy Island and the historic towns of Alnwick and Berwick.
Before becoming Transport Secretary, she was Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade from 15 September 2021 to 6 September 2022.
Other jobs in Parliament include Minister of State (Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change) at the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy; Secretary of State for International Development from February to September 2020 and Minister of State for the Armed Forces.
Political activity
She’s a Eurosceptic and voted for Brexit. In March 2018, the Independent reported she faced calls to be sacked as a ministerial aide for attending a protest by Fishing for Leave against proposed access to British waters for EU fisherman up to 2021, in defiance of an order from Conservative whips for party MPs not to take part.
During her stint in the trade department, Trevelyan signed free-trade deals with Australia and New Zealand, as well as a digital agreement with Singapore.
In the Conservative leadership race to replace Boris Johnson, Ms Trevelyan initially supported Tom Tugendhat but switched to Liz Truss when he got knocked out.
Anything else?
According to her House of Commons bio, she has a passion for singing.
She was appointed Secretary of State for Transport late last night, 6 September 2022. As well as overall responsibility for the policies of the Department for Transport, she has Cabinet responsibly for the Northern Powerhouse and oversight of departmental COVID-19 responsibilities.
Get in touch
She can be contacted at: [email protected]
