Kit Malthouse: 12 facts about the new education secretary

Downing Street has announced that Kit Malthouse is the new education secretary following a reshuffle by the new prime minister Liz Truss.

1. Born in 1966, Malthouse is 55 years old. This is older than the average for education secretaries, but he is a long way off being the oldest. Keith Joseph was 63.
2. Malthouse is the MP for North West Hampshire, but he is not the first education secretary to represent the county in recent history. Damian Hinds was the MP for East Hampshire.
3. Like his recent predecessors Michelle Donelan and James Cleverly, Malthouse was first elected in 2015. He has been a work and pensions minister and crime and policing minister, but served more recently as chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
4. He is the fourth education secretary in just over two months, and the fifth in the past year. Cleverly, now foreign secretary, was in post for less than two months. His predecessor Donelan served for just 35 hours. Malthouse will no doubt be hoping for a longer tenure.
5. Born in Liverpool, Malthouse studied at Sudley County Primary school and Liverpool College, which was at the time a private school but has since become an academy, before studying politics and economics at Newcastle University.
6. After graduation, Malthouse moved to London and qualified as a chartered accountant, working for Deloitte and Touche. He was also involved in a “number of startups” including County Finance Group, of which he remains chair and a majority shareholder.
7. He was elected to Westminster Council in 1998 and became its deputy leader, standing down in 2006. He was elected to the London Assembly two years later, the same year as Cleverly was elected to the same body.
8. In 2008, London mayor Boris Johnson appointed Malthouse as his deputy mayor for policing, a role he held for four years before becoming deputy major for business and enterprise.
9. An often touchy subject, but as the role involves children so directly it will be mentioned at times: Malthouse has three.
10. He is perhaps best known for the eponymous “Malthouse compromise”, a Brexit plan he brokered between leave and remain-supporting MPs in 2019.
11. During his time as policing minister, Malthouse said he believed schools should teach boys how to treat women and girls with respect. His comments came in the wake of the murder of Sarah Everard.
12. While Johnson was on holiday this summer, Malthouse was responsible for coordinating the government’s response to the extreme heatwave in July, and was criticised for telling schools to stay open.