David Willetts

David Linsay Willetts, Baron Willetts, (born 9 March 1956) is a British politician and life peer.

He went on to say that, "'One of the things that happened over that period was that the entirely admirable transformation of opportunities for women meant that with a lot of the expansion of education in the 1960s, '70s and '80s, the first beneficiaries were the daughters of middle-class families who had previously been excluded from educational opportunities [...] And if you put that with what is called 'assortative mating' – that well-educated women marry well-educated men – this transformation of opportunities for women ended up magnifying social divides. It is delicate territory because it is not a bad thing that women had these opportunities, but it widened the gap in household incomes because you suddenly had two-earner couples, both of whom were well-educated, compared with often workless households where nobody was educated'."

As the minister responsible for universities, Willetts was an advocate and spokesperson for the coalition government's policy of increasing the cap on tuition fees in England and Wales from £3,225 to £9,000 per year.

From 1992 to 2015, he was the Member of Parliament representing the constituency of Havant in Hampshire.

Aged 36, Willetts entered Parliament in 1992 as the MP for Havant.

He quickly established himself in Parliament, becoming a Whip, a Cabinet Office Minister, and then Paymaster General in his first term (when that role was split between the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury as a policy co-ordination role).

During this period Willetts gained "Two Brains" as a nickname, a monicker reportedly coined by The Guardian's former political editor Michael White.

Paul Foot wrote in Private Eye that in a 1993 document called The Opportunities for Private Funding in the NHS, published by the Social Market Foundation and financed by private healthcare company BUPA, Willetts provided the "intellectual thrust" for private finance initiatives (PFIs) in the National Health Service.

However, Willetts was forced to resign from the latter post by the Standards and Privileges Committee over an investigation into Neil Hamilton in 1996, when it found that he had "dissembled" in his evidence to the Committee over whether pressure was put onto an earlier investigation into Hamilton.

Despite the resignation, Willetts was able to return to the shadow front bench a few years later while William Hague was Leader of the Opposition, initially serving in the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Education Secretary before becoming Shadow Social Security (later Shadow Work and Pensions) Secretary.

He carved out a reputation as an expert on pensions and benefits.

Since leaving the DWP post, he has been recruited as an external consultant by the actuaries Punter Southall.

Following the 2005 election, he served as Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in the Shadow Cabinet under Michael Howard.

In August 2005, after ruling out running for leader owing to a lack of support, commentators speculated that he was gunning for the post of Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer and would cut a deal with either David Davis or David Cameron.

On 15 September he confirmed his support for Davis, at that time the bookies' favourite.

Willetts, a centrist moderniser, went to ground following the announcement of the Davis tax plan since it was widely speculated that he disagreed with the seemingly uncosted and widely derided tax plan and found it impossible to defend.

Davis then lost the candidacy race to Cameron.

Following Cameron's win, Willetts was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills in Cameron's first Shadow Cabinet in December 2005, the role Cameron had vacated, later becoming Shadow Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills.

On 19 May 2007, Willetts made a controversial speech on grammar schools in which he defended the existing Conservative Party policy of not reintroducing grammar schools.

The speech received a mixed reception.

The analysis was applauded by The Guardian and The Times.

However, the more right-wing The Daily Telegraph was strongly critical of the speech, which was unpopular with some Conservative Party activists.

The speech was made more controversial when David Cameron weighed into the argument, backing Willetts' speech and describing his critics as "delusional", accusing them of "splashing around in the shallow end of the educational debate" and of "clinging on to outdated mantras that bear no relation to the reality of life".

The Department for Education and Skills was abolished by the new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, who established two new departments.

On 2 July 2007, Cameron reshuffled Willetts down to the junior of the two departments: the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills.

His title became Shadow Minister for Universities and Skills since Gordon Brown's merger of the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills with the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform into the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in June 2009.

He served as Minister of State for Universities and Science from 2010 until July 2014 and became a member of the House of Lords in 2015.

He was appointed chair of the UK Space Agency's board in April 2022.

He is president of the Resolution Foundation.

Willetts was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and Christ Church, Oxford, where he studied philosophy, politics and economics.

Willetts graduated with a first-class degree.

Having served as Nigel Lawson's private researcher, Willetts took charge of the Treasury monetary policy division at 26 before moving over to Margaret Thatcher's Policy Unit at 28.

He subsequently took over the Centre for Policy Studies, aged 31.

Following the 2010 general election, Prime Minister David Cameron appointed Willetts as the Minister of State for Universities and Science.

In June 2011, Willetts said during the launch of the Government's social mobility strategy that movement between the classes had "stagnated" over the past 40 years, and Willetts attributed this partly to the entry of women into the workplace and universities for the lack of progress for men.

"Feminism trumped egalitarianism", he said, adding that women who would otherwise have been housewives had taken university places and well-paid jobs that could have gone to ambitious working-class men.

In November 2013, Willetts announced the sale of student loans to Erudio Student Loans – a debt collection consortium – removing £160m from public debt but ignoring the implications for former students.

In July 2014, Willetts announced that he would not contest the next general election, saying that "after more than 20 years the time has come to move onto fresh challenges."

In October 2014, Willetts was appointed a visiting professor at King's College London.

It was announced that he was to be a life peer in the 2015 Dissolution Honours and was created Baron Willetts, of Havant in the County of Hampshire, on 16 October 2015.