Justine Greening

Justine Greening (born 30 April 1969) is a British politician who served as Secretary of State for Education from 2016 to 2018.

She studied Business Economics and Accounting at the University of Southampton, graduating with a first class honours degree in 1990.

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 obtained an Executive MBA from the London Business School in 2000.

Before entering Parliament, Greening trained and qualified as an accountant, working as an accountant/finance manager for, amongst others, PricewaterhouseCoopers, GlaxoSmithKline and Centrica.

She contested the constituency of Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush in 2001, finishing second with a reduced share of the vote for the Conservatives.

A member of the Conservative Party, she was Member of Parliament (MP) for Putney from 2005 to 2019.

Greening gained the seat of Putney from Labour 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%).

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.

Greening was the youngest female Conservative MP in the House of Commons until Chloe Smith was elected to Parliament on 12 October 2009.

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 focused on transport and local community benefits.

Prior to that, she served as Economic Secretary to the Treasury from 2010 to 2011, Secretary of State for Transport from 2011 to 2012 and Secretary of State for International Development from 2012 to 2016.

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, where she helped deliver the emergency budget in 2010.

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

Whilst Greening represented the London constituency of Putney she 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.

In her role as Secretary of State for Transport, Greening oversaw the award of new rail franchises, including the award of the Intercity West Coast franchise to First Group in 2012.

In October 2012, Greening announced that the government was cancelling the franchise competition for the InterCity West Coast franchise after discovering significant technical flaws in the way the franchise process was conducted, reversing the decision to award it to FirstGroup.

Subsequently, Sir Philip Rutnam, then Permanent Secretary at the Department for Transport, issued an apology to Greening stating the problem "clearly the responsibility of officials and not ministers".

A report by the Transport Select Committee found fault with Greening and revealed that the cost to the taxpayer of the flawed franchise process was at least £40 million.

On 4 September 2012, Greening was replaced by Patrick McLoughlin at the Department for Transport and became Secretary of State for International Development.

The move was strongly criticised by the Mayor of London Boris Johnson who believed it was linked to her opposition to a third runway at Heathrow.

As Secretary of State for International Development, Greening became a member of the National Security Council.

Whilst she was in the role of International Development Secretary, the UK became the first G8 country to meet the commitment to spend 0.7% of its gross national income on international development, meeting the UN official development assistance target subsequently legislating for this.

Greening led the UK response to international natural disasters such as Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013 and the Nepal earthquake in 2015.

In 2014, Greening held the first-ever Girl Summit in London, which saw leaders and young people from all over the world come together to work to help combat female genital mutilation and early and forced marriage.

Greening led the UK response to the Syria crisis including the UK work in Lebanon and Jordan to support local economies to provide work for refugees as well as local people.

Greening pioneered the "No Lost Generation" initiative with then UNHCR boss Antonio Guterres and UNICEF to enable Syrian refugee children to still continue their education.

Greening led the international response to the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone in 2014–2015, committing a £230 million aid package including support for 700 treatment beds and funding for children orphaned by the crisis.

Greening resigned as Education Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities in the January 2018 Cabinet reshuffle.

On 3 September 2019, she announced she would not be standing as an MP at the next general election.

Later the same day, she was one of 21 Conservative MPs who had the whip withdrawn after voting against Boris Johnson's government over Brexit.

She sat as an independent MP until Parliament was dissolved for the December 2019 general election.

Greening was born in Rotherham, where she attended Oakwood Comprehensive School.