UPDATE2 UK Gov Appoint Karen Bradley to Oversee Media and Broadband

It’s all change. The new Prime Minister, Theresa May, has appointed the MP for Staffordshire Moorlands, Karen Bradley, to be her new Secretary of State for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), which among other things oversees the Broadband Delivery UK project and telecoms matters.

The former Parliamentary Under Secretary of State in the Home Office replaces the outgoing John Whittingdale MP, who admittedly had only been in the role for around a year after himself taking over from Sajid Javid MP, who also occupied the position for a similarly short period of time. Looking back, history shows that this is a very hard job to keep (here).

As for Karen Bradley herself, she originally graduated from Imperial College London with a BSc in Mathematics. After that she later went to work as a Chartered Accountant and Chartered Tax Adviser at Deloitte & Touche and then KPMG. She also spent a few years acting as a self-employed fiscal and economic consultant until entering politics.

A quick look at Karen’s Voting Record suggests that she doesn’t have all that much experience with matters of telecoms, broadband, media or even culture, but then her predecessors weren’t always terribly clued up on those subjects either. Karen does at least have a Facebook page, as well as a website, although we’re still trying to find if she has a Twitter account.. yet.

However Karen does have a history of campaigning for rural and farming issues and in keeping with that she is on record as pushing for better rural broadband connectivity. She has also tackled some Internet and cyber security related issues while acting as the Security Minister.

James Blessing, ISPA Chair, said:

“The new Government has a great opportunity to continue to put the Internet and digital at the heart of its priorities and forthcoming Industrial Strategy. We call on the new Secretaries of State for Culture and Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy to recognise how essential the Internet industry is for the UK.

ISPs stand ready to deliver in the post-Brexit environment, however Government needs to play its part by ensuring the internet industry is not held back by excessive regulation, are encouraged to invest and innovate and can access talent and finance.”

Mind you, Karen isn’t the only minister that we should be keeping an eye on for broadband and Internet policy. For example, Theresa May’s old job of Home Secretary has now gone to Amber Rudd MP, who gets to oversee implementation of the highly technical and incredibly controversial Investigatory Powers Bill (IPBill). We doubt she’ll enjoy that.

Similarly Greg Clarke MP has replaced Sajid Javid MP as the new Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), which often dips its feet into the realm of broadband and mobile connectivity; albeit with a focus on improving business connectivity. We should add that this is now called the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

Finally, the long standing Digital Economy Minister, Ed Vaizey MP, who arguably has more involvement with broadband and Internet matters than most of his higher level counterparts, has been appointed to the Privy Council where he gets to update the Queen on Government changes and political matters. At the time of writing he still retains his position as the Digital Economy Minister (Entanet won’t be pleased).

Otherwise it remains to be seen what sort of direction or drive Karen and the other new appointments will bring to their respective roles, but as always we’ll be keeping a close eye on all the developments so the rest of you can save your sanity.

UPDATE 15th July 2016

Added a comment from the ISPA above.

UPDATE 16th July 2016

The axe finally fell on Ed Vaizey as Theresa May completed her risky clean sweep operation of the Cameron era. Ed is being replaced in his role as the Minister of State for Digital & Culture by Matthew Hancock MP, who said he was feeling “energised to take up the challenge to make UK tech & cultural centre of the world.”

Matt is the Conservative MP for West Suffolk and he has held a number of ministerial posts related to business and energy, although his last appointment before today was as the Government’s Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General.

On the broadband front he’s known to be largely supportive of Ed Vaizey’s direction via Broadband Delivery UK and the proposed 10Mbps USO, so we don’t expect much to change on that end of things. The outgoing Ed Vaizey suggested that Matt knows the tech sector well, although he was educated in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. However he did work “briefly” for his family’s computer software company, so there’s a little bit of IT.