Darling revamps Treasury team

All change at ministerial level in Treasury posts, with Primarolo gone to Department of Health

Written by Our Parliamentary Correspondent

Gordon Brown has shaken up the new Treasury team with a complete change of personnel.

The honorific title of paymaster general previously held by the HMRC boss Dawn Primarolo - moved to be number two in the Department of Health - is given to Olympics and London minister Tessa Jowell, demoted out of the top team to the Cabinet Office.

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Rising Blarite star Andy Burnham becomes Mr Darling's deputy as Treasury chief secretary in charge of public spending and government efficiency.

Former ministers Jane Kennedy and Angela Eagle are brought back into government as financial secretary and minister of state and exchequer secretary and parliamentary secretary respectively.

Burnley MP Kitty Ussher, a former special adviser to ex-health secretary Patricia Hewitt when she was in charge of the Department of Trade and Industry, is brought into government for the first time, becoming economic secretary. She takes charge of city affairs.

Kennedy, who quit her job as a health minister in a row over childrens' hospital funding in her constituency last year, takes over Primarolo's responsibility for HMRC, and Eagle takes over as general Treasury minister after three years on the Treasury Select Committee and was on Monday the first of the team to appear in the Commons as she opened the debate on giving the National Statistics Office independence of government.

Another high-profile Blairite survivor - former work and pensions secretary John Hutton - is put in charge of a much more narrowly and domestically focussed successor to the DTI as secretary of state for business, enterprise and regulatory reform with former CBI boss Sir Digby Jones as his minister of state in the House of Lords.

Former Treasury chief secretary Stephen Timms is Mr Hutton's commons deputy while the rest of his team is Pat McFadden, Malclom Wicks, Lord Drayson and Gareth Thomas.

Further Reading:

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