32 Facts About Justine Greening

Justine Greening was born on 30 April 1969 and is a British politician who served as Secretary of State for Education from 2016 to 2018.

Justine Greening sat as an independent MP until Parliament was dissolved for the December 2019 general election.

Justine Greening was born in Rotherham, where she attended Oakwood Comprehensive School.

Justine Greening studied Business Economics and Accounting at the University of Southampton, graduating with a first class honours degree in 1990.

Justine Greening obtained an Executive MBA from the London Business School in 2000.

Justine Greening contested the constituency of Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush in 2001, finishing second with a reduced share of the vote for the Conservatives.

Justine Greening gained the seat of Putney from Labour in the 2005 general election on 5 May 2005.

Justine Greening won 15,497 votes giving her a majority of 1,766.

Justine Greening unseated Tony Colman, who had held the seat for Labour since defeating David Mellor in 1997.

Justine Greening was the youngest female Conservative MP in the House of Commons until Chloe Smith was elected to Parliament on 12 October 2009.

Justine Greening was appointed a vice-chair of the Conservative Party on 15 December 2005, having earlier that year been appointed a member of the Work and Pensions Committee.

In January 2009, following a further shadow ministerial reshuffle, Justine Greening was promoted to Shadow Minister for London, within the Communities and Local Government Team with responsibility for Local Government Finance.

Justine Greening held the post of Economic Secretary to the Treasury from 13 May 2010 to 14 October 2011, where she helped deliver the emergency budget in 2010.

Whilst Justine Greening represented the London constituency of Putney she had always campaigned against a third runway at Heathrow Airport.

In October 2012, Justine Greening announced that the government was cancelling the franchise competition for the InterCity West Coast franchise after discovering significant technical flaws in the way the franchise process was conducted, reversing the decision to award it to FirstGroup.

On 4 September 2012, Justine Greening was replaced by Patrick McLoughlin at the Department for Transport and became Secretary of State for International Development.

Justine Greening led the UK response to international natural disasters such as Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013 and the Nepal earthquake in 2015.

In 2014, Justine Greening held the first-ever Girl Summit in London, which saw leaders and young people from all over the world come together to work to help combat female genital mutilation and early and forced marriage.

Justine Greening led the UK response to the Syria crisis including the UK work in Lebanon and Jordan to support local economies to provide work for refugees as well as local people.

In 2015, Justine Greening announced a new economic empowerment programme for women at the Global Goals Summit and campaigned successfully for Sustainable Development Goal 5: Gender Equality to be included amongst the UN Sustainable Development goals during international negotiations.

Justine Greening joined other founding panel members including Jim Kim, the then president of the World Bank, and Christine Lagarde, the then head of the International Monetary Fund, to make recommendations on how to support the realisation of women's economic potential around the world.

Justine Greening argued during negotiations for the Paris Climate Change Agreement that climate change would continue to be a root cause of refugee migration and launched an insurance scheme to help developing nations deal with natural disasters caused by climate change.

Justine Greening was appointed Secretary of State for Education and Minister for Women and Equalities by Theresa May on 14 July 2016, replacing Nicky Morgan in both roles.

Justine Greening remained Education Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities after the election until her resignation from government on 8 January 2018, during a cabinet reshuffle: it was reported that she had rejected the post of Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, interpreted variously as the offer of a "sideways move" or a demotion.

Whilst Education Secretary, Justine Greening developed targeted Opportunity Areas across England which saw targeted funding to link schools and employers in areas with weak social mobility.

In December 2017, Justine Greening launched the Department for Education's Social Mobility Action Plan to improve social mobility through education which included four ambitions on further education, skills, early years and attainment gaps.

Justine Greening unveiled possible policies such as scrapping tuition fees in favour of a graduate tax and increasing the number of Opportunity Areas.

On 3 September 2019, Justine Greening joined 20 other rebel Conservative MPs to vote against the Conservative government of Boris Johnson.

However, Justine Greening said she was not planning to stand for re-election.

Since leaving Parliament, Justine Greening has campaigned for social mobility and equality of opportunity.

Since December 2020, Justine Greening partnered with Northampton University to support national COVID-19 recovery in a campaign.

In June 2016, Justine Greening revealed on Twitter that she was in a "happy same-sex relationship".