The Department of Health (DH) ministers are appointed by the Prime Minister to take forward health and social care policy.
Government departments are usually headed by a minister from the House of Commons and have at least one minister in the House of Lords.
The Secretary of State for Health is a member of the Cabinet. He or she has overall responsibility for the Department and heads the DH ministerial team. Junior ministers, ministers of state and parliamentary under-secretaries, support the Secretary of State and are also responsible for particular areas of the Department's policies. The Lords Minister handles the Department's business in the House of Lords.
Each DH minister has a private office which supports them to carry out their work. They work with their private offices, each other, senior officials, ministers in other departments and with key stakeholder groups to develop policies that fit into the overall strategic objectives of the Department. The work of ministers is wide and varied.
The biographies of the DH ministers whose responsibilities include the MHRA are given below:
Secretary of State for Health - Rt Hon Andrew Lansley CBE MP
Mr Lansley was educated at Brentwood School, Essex and the University of Exeter, where he was President of the Guild for Students. He began his own career as a civil servant, working at the Department of Trade and Industry.
In 1992 Mr Lansley was awarded a CBE for running the Conservative campaign for the 1992 General Election. In 1997 he was elected MP for South Cambridgeshire, and joined the Shadow Cabinet as Health Secretary in 2003.
Mr Lansley lives in South Cambridgeshire with his wife and their two children, he also has three children from his first marriage.
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Quality (Lords) - Earl Howe
Earl Howe was born in 1951. He was educated at Rugby School and Christ Church, Oxford. After leaving University in 1973, he joined Barclays Bank and served in a number of managerial and senior managerial posts both overseas and in London.
In 1987, he was appointed London director of Adam and Co. plc, the Scottish-based private bank, where he remained until 1990.
He is married with three daughters and a son.
In 1991, Lord Howe became a government whip in the House of Lords with responsibilities, successively, for transport, employment, defence and environment. Following the General Election of 1992, he was appointed Parliamentary Secretary (Lords) at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food; and in 1995 Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Defence, a post he relinquished at the 1997 General Election.
He was opposition spokesman for Health and Social Services in the House of Lords since 1997. He is an elected hereditary peer under the provisions of the House of Lords Act 1999. Apart from his frontbench responsibilities, Earl Howe has previously been a member of the all-party groups on penal affairs, abuse investigations, pharmaceuticals, adoption, mental health and epilepsy.
