Grant Shapps

Conservative co-chairman

Minister of State, Department for International Development

Grant Shapps (Born September 14, 1968) is is a British politician, who served as the Secretary for Business, Employment and Industry from June 2021. Shapps also has Cabinet responsibility for the Northern Powerhouse. A member of the Conservative Party, he has been the Member of Parliament for Welwyn Hatfield since the 2005 general election. Following the 2010 election, he served as Minister of State for Housing and Local Government in the Department for Communities and Local Government. Grant was appointed to the Privy Council in June 2010. In September 2012 he was appointed as co-chairman to the Conservative Party.

**Career outside politics**

Grant studied at Cassio College, Watford before graduating from Manchester Polytechnic with a business and finance diploma.
In 1990, Grant founded PrintHouse Corporation, a design, print, website creation and marketing business in London. He stepped down as a director in 2009, but remained the majority shareholder. Shapps founded a web publishing business, How To Corp Limited, with his wife while he was recovering from cancer. The company marketed business publications and software. Shapps stood down as a director in July 2008; his wife remained as director until the company was dissolved in 2014.

**Political Career**

Shapps stood again in the 2005 election and was elected as the Conservative MP for Welwyn Hatfield, defeating the Labour MP and Minister for Public

Health, Melanie Johnson. He received 22,172 votes (49.6%) and had a majority of 5,946 (13.3%), recording the second highest swing from Labour to Conservative in the 2005 election of 8.2%.

   In June 2007, Shapps became shadow housing minister, outside the shadow cabinet, but entitled to attend its meetings.

He was shadow housing minister during the period of the last four Labour government housing ministers.

In May 2010, Shapps became housing and local government minister within the Communities and Local Government.As Minister of State for Housing, Shapps promoted plans for flexible rent and controversially ended automatic lifetime social tenancies. He also introduced the New Homes Bonus which rewarded councils for building more homes. He denied claims that changes in Housing Benefit rules would be unfair claiming that ordinary people could no longer afford some of the homes paid for by the £24bn Housing Benefit bill. Shapps championed Tenant Panels.

In September 2012, Shapps was appointed Co-Chairman of the Conservative Party in Cameron's first major reshuffle. On arrival Shapps set about preparing Conservative Campaign Headquarters for the 2015 election by installing an election countdown clock. That November, Shapps hired political strategist Lynton Crosby to provide strategic advice and run the 2015 election campaign.

On 11 May 2015, Shapps was sacked from the cabinet, which he had attended as Conservative party co-chairman and minister without portfolio at the Cabinet Office, and appointed as minister of state at the Department for International Development.

## Grant Shapps

In 2019, Boris Johnson appointed Shapps Secretary of State for Transport upon his accession to Prime Minister.