Four former energy secretaries to stand down as MPs

Silhouette of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament in London in sunset

A quartet of former energy secretaries are to stand down from Parliament ahead of the upcoming general election.

Greg Clark and Dame Andrea Leadsom announced on Friday (24 May) that they will not be seeking re-election for the Conservative Party at the general election on 4 July.

Fellow ex-energy secretaries Kwasi Kwarteng and Sir Alok Sharma had already announced that they will not be standing again for Parliament.

Clark was the first secretary of state at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, holding the role throughout Theresa May’s government from 2016 to 2019.

He played a key role in the cancellation of the Swansea Bay tidal barrage project and under his watch Toshiba and Hitachi withdrew from their nuclear power station projects at Moorside in Cumbria and Wylfa respectively.

The Tunbridge Wells MP also commissioned academic professor Dieter Helm’s cost of energy review.

Leadsom took over from Clark as secretary of state for business and energy after Boris Johnson became prime minister in July 2019, serving in the role until the following February.

The south Northamptonshire MP was also energy minister under David Cameron’s premiership from May 2015 to July 2016, before moving to become environment secretary for a year when May became prime minister.

Her successor Sir Alok Sharma, who was business and energy secretary for just under a year from February 2020 to January 2021 – before taking on the role of chair of the COP 26 climate change summit in Glasgow – had already announced that he is stepping down as an MP.

So too had his successor Kwarteng, who held the role of energy secretary until September 2023, when he was promoted to chancellor of the exchequer in Liz Truss’ short-lived government.

Kwarteng was also minister of state for energy under Sharma with whom he published the long-stalled energy white paper in December 2020, and oversaw the government’s response to the crisis caused by escalating natural gas prices from the summer of 2021 onwards.

Next month’s election will see the exit from the House of Commons too of long serving shadow energy minister Alan Whitehead and Philip Dunne, chair of the Commons environmental audit committee.

George Eustice, environment secretary from 2020 to 2022, has already announced he is leaving Parliament and Angus MacNeil, chair of the Commons energy security and net zero committee faces a tough fight to retain his Outer Hebrides constituency after being expelled from the Scottish National Party.