Jeremy Wright QC Replaces Matt Hancock as UK Culture Secretary

The fallout from recent Brexit related resignations has triggered another round of musical chairs and resulted in the UK Government replacing Matt Hancock MP at the helm of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) with Jeremy Wright QC (MP for Kenilworth and Southam).

Culture Secretary’s don’t seem to last very long these days and indeed Hancock, who now moves up to replace Jeremy Hunt MP as the UK Health Secretary, was only promoted to the position of Culture Secretary in January 2018 when he replaced Karen Bradley MP (here). Prior to that Hancock had done a reasonable job as Digital Minister and he generally put in a fairly steady showing during his short time as the Culture Secretary.

We’ll be sad to see Hancock go since he did appear to have genuine enthusiasm for encouraging the adoption of “full fibre” (FTTH/P) and 5G mobile connectivity across the United Kingdom, as well as tackling some of the biggest consumer bug bears around national broadband ISP connectivity in general.

Despite this many will no doubt feel as if the UK Government could be doing a lot more to further improve digital connectivity and such things can easily be affected by a change of post at the top. Unfortunately we know very little about newcomer Jeremy Wright QC MP and he hasn’t been hugely active in the broadband sphere before, aside from speaking a few words of support for the Government’s related ambitions.

Jeremy was a pro-Remain voter in the Brexit referendum and he has a very strong background in law. In keeping with that he has previously held two prominent positions as the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Justice and more recently as the Attorney General. Generally he’s been more focused on matters of law, justice and education than telecoms, so this will be a steep learning curve.

Perhaps his first big task will be to prepare for the forthcoming outcome of the Future Telecoms Infrastructure Review, which will no doubt be a challenge for somebody with limited familiarity of the topic. Suffice to say that such high level changes at this stage of the game aren’t always helpful but we wish Jeremy the best of luck.

Useful Link’s
Jeremy Wright’s Website
Jeremy Wright’s Parliament History Page
Jeremy Wright’s Facebook Page
Jeremy Wright’s Twitter Account (dormant since 2015!)
Jeremy Wright’s Voting History