Who is Gillian Keegan? Tory MP and education secretary loses seat in Chichester
Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, has lost her Chichester seat to the Liberal Democrat candidate Jess Brown-Fuller, who received 49% of the vote share.Keegan had represented Chichester in West Sussex – which had been a Tory stronghold for more than a decade.
Keegan had been the MP for Chichester since 2017 and at the last vote had a majority of 21,000.
The last time a Liberal Democrat represented Chichester was in 1913.
Here’s everything you need to know about the now former education secretary.
Who is Gillian Keegan?
Keegan was the MP for Chichester in West Sussex. She is the first politician from the county to serve in the role. She was previously minister of state for care at the Department of Health and Social Care.
The 55-year-old is the first education secretary to have left school at 16 since Labour’s Alan Johnson, in 2006-2007.
After leaving school, she was an apprentice at Delco Electronics, a subsidiary of General Motors in Kirkby, Merseyside. She was sponsored to study a degree in business at Liverpool John Moores University and went on to do a Sloan Fellowship masters degree at London Business School.
Before entering politics, Keegan spent almost 30 years living and working abroad in the manufacturing, banking and IT industries. She was most recently chief marketing officer for Travelport, a travel technology company.
She became interested in politics as a teenager when she found the economic approach trade unions took to be “all powerful and made it very unattractive for inward investment”.
Keegan lives in West Sussex with her husband, Michael, and has two stepsons.
Her father-in-law, Denis Keegan, was Conservative MP for Nottingham South.
What posts has she held before?
Keegan was elected as an MP in June 2017 and again in 2019. She was a member of the public accounts select committee between September 2017 and December 2018. The committee examines government spending and holds officials and politicians accountable for the provision of public services.
In September 2018, she was appointed parliamentary private secretary (PPS) to the Treasury. The role involved supporting Treasury ministers in their parliamentary and departmental responsibilities.
She became PPS to the defence secretary in January 2019. A few months later, she received another promotion to become the home secretary’s PPS, a position she held until August 2019.
At the Department for Health and Social Care, she was made the minister responsible for care in September 2021. Former prime minister Liz Truss then made her the minister for Africa in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in September 2022.
GCSE and A-level grading controversy
In August 2020, Keegan was criticised for being on holiday during the GCSE and A-level grading controversy.
As a result of the pandemic, student examinations were cancelled and an alternative method was designed and introduced at short notice. This was to determine the grades to be awarded to pupils for that year, who were given grades based on teachers’ predictions.
Keegan was also criticised for posting numerous holiday pictures on Instagram during this period.
She defended herself by claiming that she wasn't the minister in charge of GCSE and A-level exams.
