1. Wesley Paul William Streeting is a British politician who has served as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care since July 2024.
70 Facts About Wes Streeting
1. 2.
Wes Streeting read history at the University of Cambridge and was President of the Cambridge Students' Union from 2004 to 2005.
3.
Wes Streeting was the president of the National Union of Students from 2008 to 2010.
4.
Wes Streeting was reelected to Parliament in both the 2017 and 2019 general elections.
5.
Wes Streeting became the Shadow Minister for Schools in October 2020 after the resignation of Margaret Greenwood before joining the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Child Poverty in the May 2021 British shadow cabinet reshuffle.
6.
Wes Streeting declared the NHS to be broken and has vowed to resolve the junior doctor strikes and decrease waiting times.
7.
Wesley Streeting was born on 21 January 1983 in Stepney.
8.
Wes Streeting has five brothers, a sister and a stepsister.
9.
Wes Streeting's maternal grandfather was an armed robber who spent time in prison, and his grandmother became embroiled in his crimes and ended up in Holloway Prison, where she met Christine Keeler.
10.
Wes Streeting's grandmother was released from prison to give birth to his mother at Whittington Hospital.
11.
Wes Streeting was "really well-read and well-informed", and engaged his grandson in lively discussions about religion and politics.
12.
Wes Streeting recalls Conservative Party politicians, particularly Ann Widdecombe, in the 1990s "denigrating single-parent families like mine, which I took quite personally".
13.
Wes Streeting was educated at Westminster City School, a comprehensive state school in Victoria, London.
14.
Wes Streeting went on to study history at Selwyn College, Cambridge graduating in 2004.
15.
Wes Streeting briefly left the Labour Party because he opposed its decision to enter the Iraq War.
16.
Wes Streeting came out as gay in his second year of university.
17.
Wes Streeting's election was reported by The Guardian as "a move that will lend weight to the fight to modernise the union".
18.
Wes Streeting was a non-executive director of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, as well as the Higher Education academy, having served on their board as Vice President when he was a non-executive director of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education.
19.
Shortly after his election as NUS President, Wes Streeting was appointed as a member of the government's Youth Citizenship Commission, chaired by Professor Jonathan Tonge of the University of Liverpool, which published its report in June 2009.
20.
Wes Streeting supported university tuition fees as president, consistent with UK government policy during the New Labour years.
21.
In 2009, while President of the NUS, Wes Streeting posted tweets about wanting to push Daily Mail journalist Jan Moir 'under a train'.
22.
Wes Streeting worked for the Labour Party-related organisation Progress for a year.
23.
Wes Streeting went on to serve as head of education at Stonewall, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights charity, where he led their Education for All campaign to tackle homophobia in schools.
24.
Wes Streeting was a public sector consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers, which he gave up on election as a councillor, because Redbridge Council was a "current audit client" of the firm; this forced him to choose between keeping his job or forcing a second by-election.
25.
In 2010, shortly after leaving PwC, Wes Streeting was appointed as Head of Policy and Strategic Communications for Oona King's unsuccessful bid to win the Labour Party's nomination to be its candidate in the 2012 London Mayoral election.
26.
Wes Streeting was elected as Deputy Leader of the Labour Group in October 2011.
27.
Wes Streeting sought re-election in 2014 to represent the Aldborough ward.
28.
At a public meeting of the Redbridge Citizens' Assembly on 6 May 2014, Wes Streeting promised on behalf of his group that, if they won the election, they would not reduce the level of Council Tax support provided to low-income working-age residents.
29.
In May 2014, Labour took control of Redbridge Council for the first time and Wes Streeting was appointed Deputy Leader of the council, with Jas Athwal as Leader.
30.
Wes Streeting resigned as Deputy Leader in May 2015, shortly after being elected Member of Parliament for Ilford North.
31.
Wes Streeting did not stand for re-election after being elected to Parliament, and ceased to be a councillor on 3 May 2018.
32.
Wes Streeting campaigned in favour of the United Kingdom remaining in the European Union in the run-up to the 2016 EU membership referendum.
33.
Wes Streeting later campaigned for a People's Vote, a campaign group calling for a public vote on the final Brexit deal between the UK and the European Union.
34.
Wes Streeting is a vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism, a co-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Jews and a supporter of Labour Friends of Israel.
35.
Wes Streeting is a co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims and a supporter of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East.
36.
In July 2018, Streeting called for "targeted economic sanctions" against Israeli settlements in the West Bank in response to the Israeli government "grossly infringing on the human rights of Palestinians".
37.
In July 2019, Wes Streeting was reported in the media as using abusive language towards a non-Jewish antisemitism campaigner.
38.
Shortly before the 2019 general election, Wes Streeting told a Labour First meeting that the party faced electoral oblivion in any snap poll due to the leadership's poor handling of Brexit and allegations of antisemitism.
39.
On 16 October 2020, Wes Streeting became Shadow Minister for Schools in succession to Margaret Greenwood, who had resigned the previous day following her opposition to the Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill.
40.
Wes Streeting was promoted to the post of Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in the November 2021 shadow cabinet reshuffle.
41.
In February 2022, Wes Streeting was re-selected as the Labour candidate for Ilford North at the 2024 general election.
42.
Wes Streeting was ranked sixth in the New Statesman's Left Power List of May 2023, described as "one of the most prominent and confident members" of the shadow cabinet.
43.
Wes Streeting welcomed the final report of the Cass Review, which dealt with gender services for children and young people, in April 2024.
44.
Wes Streeting said that the report "must provide a watershed moment for the NHS's gender identity services" and "provide[d] an evidence-led framework to deliver that".
45.
At the 2024 general election, Wes Streeting retained his Ilford North constituency by a margin of only 528 votes following a challenge by independent British-Palestinian candidate Leanne Mohamad, who ran in protest against Labour's stance on the Gaza war and the Gaza humanitarian crisis.
46.
In July 2024, Wes Streeting was appointed Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.
47.
Wes Streeting became a member of the Privy Council on 10 July 2024.
48.
In November 2024, Wes Streeting cautioned NHS leaders that consistently failing hospitals will be publicly identified, with managers held accountable, potentially facing removal and restrictions on future employment in the sector.
49.
Later that month, Wes Streeting voted against the Terminally Ill Adults Bill.
50.
Wes Streeting has said he suggested "working with the best of British business to reform the worst of British capitalism".
51.
In 2020, Wes Streeting said he wanted to tax capital gains on the same basis as income and suggested replacing inheritance tax with a lifetime gifts tax.
52.
Wes Streeting has promoted the establishment of a Good Work Commission to bring together the relevant stakeholders to negotiate a new employment rights settlement.
53.
Wes Streeting accused Corbyn of a "flat-footed and lackadaisical attitude" to tackling antisemitism, which was "simply unacceptable".
54.
Wes Streeting was among the 70 per cent of Labour MPs who nominated Owen Smith in the 2016 party leadership election.
55.
Wes Streeting is pro-devolution, supporting the idea of providing local authorities with greater control over public policy.
56.
Wes Streeting campaigned in favour of the United Kingdom remaining in the European Union in the run-up to the 2016 EU membership referendum.
57.
Wes Streeting appeared in The Sun and tweeted a link to the article saying he would be "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime".
58.
On health, in December 2021, in response to growing waiting times in the National Health Service, Wes Streeting said the way to reduce waiting times was better pay and conditions, while keeping a check on the six figure salaries of managers and management consultants.
59.
In January 2022, Wes Streeting said that he supported the use of private providers in the NHS to cut waiting lists.
60.
Wes Streeting is opposed to legislation on assisted dying, announcing in October 2024 that he would be voting against Kim Leadbeater's Terminally Ill Adults Bill.
61.
The Labour government gave its MPs a free vote on the legislation, and Wes Streeting said he was concerned the current state of palliative care meant patients could feel 'guilt-tripped' into ending their lives.
62.
Wes Streeting has strongly criticised those campaigning against same-sex education in schools.
63.
Wes Streeting has said it was wrong to claim that gender-critical feminists are "bigoted", and apologised to Canterbury MP Rosie Duffield, who has become known for her gender-critical views.
64.
In May 2021, Wes Streeting revealed he had been diagnosed with kidney cancer and would be stepping back from frontline politics while he received treatment for it.
65.
Wes Streeting had received a phone call from his urologist informing him that tests, initially for kidney stones, revealed he had kidney cancer.
66.
On 27 July 2021, Wes Streeting announced that he had been declared cancer-free, following an operation to remove one of his kidneys.
67.
Wes Streeting published his memoir One Boy, Two Bills and a Fry-Up, in June 2023.
68.
Wes Streeting is never self-aggrandising, yet part of his appeal is his naked ambition; in a recent interview he was unequivocal about wanting one day to be prime minister.
69.
Wes Streeting is a self-confessed Christian geek who never stopped reading and who wore his school merit badges with pride, but I was left searching for the intellect on which all his achievements were built.
70.
Wes Streeting was sworn into the Privy Council on 10 July 2024.