Former Treasury minister takes on housing brief at DLUHC
A former Treasury minister and barrister has become the latest housing minister – the fifth person to hold the role this year.
Lucy Fraser KC has taken over the housing and planning brief from Lee Rowley (picture: Richard Townshend)
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Lucy Frazer KC has taken over the housing and planning brief from MP Lee Rowley, who spent around six weeks in the job after being appointed by Liz Truss.
Mr Rowley was last month reappointed as a minister at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) by Rishi Sunak but has been given the local government brief.
Yorkshire-born Ms Frazer was appointed as a minister at DLUHC on 26 October, but up until now her brief had not been officially announced. A DLUHC spokesperson confirmed her appointment as housing and planning minister to Social Housing.
She is the 14th housing minister in 12-and-a-half years under the current Conservative administration.
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As a minister of state, the role of housing minister has been given the extra weight it previously had. As housing minister Mr Rowley was a parliamentary under-secretary, a more junior ranking minister. He has retained that status at DLUHC.
Other responsibilities – including social housing, building safety and homelessness – among junior DLUHC ministers have yet to be clarified, Social Housing understands.
Prior to joining DLUHC, Ms Frazer had a short spell under Liz Truss as a junior minister at the Department for Transport. Before that she spent a year as financial secretary to the Treasury.
Under Boris Johnson, she served as prisons minister and was acting solicitor general between March 2021 and September 2021. She was in the acting solicitor role permanently for six weeks in 2019 before being moved to the Ministry of Justice.
Ms Frazer was elected to parliament in 2015 as MP for South East Cambridgeshire, following a career as a barrister in commercial law in London.
According to her parliamentary registered interests, Ms Frazer has a house in London, deemed a “property portfolio”, which is valued over £100,000 and/or gives rental income of more than £10,000 a year.
At the start of this year, Christopher Pincher was housing minister before he became deputy chief whip in February as part of a reshuffle by Mr Johnson.
He was replaced by Pudsey MP Stuart Andrew, who later resigned amid the rebellion that led to Mr Johnson’s departure as prime minister. Mr Johnson’s response to allegations over Mr Pincher’s conduct was seen as the spark that led to his exit from Downing Street.
MP Marcus Jones took on the housing minister job briefly under Mr Johnson before Mr Rowley took up the baton.
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