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Justine Greening (born 30 April 1969) is a Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom. She has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Putney since 2005. She was appointed Economic Secretary to the Treasury in May 2010, and became Secretary of State for Transport on 14 October 2011. Her promotion followed the appointment of her predecessor, Philip Hammond, as Secretary of State for Defence following the resignation of Liam Fox.

Early life

Greening was born in Rotherham, where she attended Oakwood Comprehensive School.^[1] She attended the University of Southampton, where she studied Economics,^[2] and the London Business School (MBA). Prior to entering Parliament, she trained and qualified^[3] as an accountant, before working as an accountant/finance manager for, amongst others, Price Waterhouse Coopers, GlaxoSmithKline and Centrica.

Political career

Greening contested the constituency of Ealing, Acton & Shepherd's Bush in 2001, finishing second with a reduced share of the vote for the Conservatives. She won the seat of Putney 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%). 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 achieve a degree of success and begin to recover from 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.

Greening was appointed a Vice-Chairman (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. 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 focussed on transport and local community benefits. In March 2010, she was put in charge of co-ordinating the Conservative campaign for the 2010 General Election in London.^[4] She became Economic Secretary to the Treasury in May 2010 after the coalition government came to power.^[5] In October 2011, she became Secretary of State for Transport and was appointed a Privy Councillor.^[6]

She was the youngest female Conservative MP in the House of Commons^[7] until Chloe Smith (who coincidentally succeeded her at HM Treasury) was elected to Parliament on 12 October 2009.

During the Parliamentary expenses scandal, Greening was ranked as the 9th best value for money MP in research carried out by the right-wing think tank, the Adam Smith Institute, and of all her expenses claims she was the 599th lowest out of the 645 MPs.

References

External links

• Justine Greening MP Conservative Party profile
• Contributions in Parliament at Hansard 1803–2005
• Electoral history and profile at The Guardian
• Voting record at PublicWhip.org
• Record in Parliament at TheyWorkForYou.com
• Profile at Westminster Parliamentary Record
• www.dft.gov.uk
• Debrett's People of Today

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