Secretary of State for Transport
The secretary of state for transport, also referred to as the transport secretary, is a secretary of state in the Government of the United Kingdom, with overall responsibility for the policies of the Department for Transport.[3] The incumbent is a member of the Cabinet of the United Kingdom.
United Kingdom
Secretary of State
for Transport
Transport Secretary
(informal)
The Right Honourable
(within the UK and Commonwealth)
The Prime Minister
The Monarch
(on the advice of the Prime Minister)
- 19 May 1919:
(as Minister of Transport) - 29 May 2002:
(as Secretary of State for Transport)
Eric Campbell Geddes
(as Minister of Transport)
The office holder works alongside the other transport ministers. The corresponding shadow minister is the shadow secretary of state for transport, and the secretary of state is also scrutinised by the Transport Select Committee.[4]
The current secretary of state for transport is Mark Harper, who was appointed on 25 October 2022.[5]
History[edit]
The Ministry of Transport absorbed the Ministry of Shipping and was renamed the Ministry of War Transport in 1941, but resumed its previous name at the end of the war.[6]
The Ministry of Civil Aviation was created by Winston Churchill in 1944 to look at peaceful ways of using aircraft and to find something for the aircraft factories to do after the war.[7] The new Conservative government in 1951 appointed the same minister to both Transport and Civil Aviation, finally amalgamating the ministries on 1 October 1953.[8]
The Ministry was renamed back to the Ministry of Transport on 14 October 1959, when a separate Ministry of Aviation was formed.
Transport responsibilities were subsumed by the Department for the Environment, headed by the secretary of state for the environment from 15 October 1970 to 10 September 1976.
The Department for Transport was recreated as a separate department by James Callaghan in 1976.[9]
The super-department Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions was created in 1997 for Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott.
In 2001, the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions was widely considered unwieldy and so was broken up,[10] with the Transport functions now combined with Local Government and the Regions in the DTLR (Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions).
List of ministers and secretaries of state[edit]
Minister of Transport (1919–1941)[edit]
Colour key (for political parties):
Conservative
Labour
National Labour
Liberal
National Liberal