Esther McVey

In the 2010 general election, McVey gained Wirral West on defeating the Labour candidate, Phil Davies, by a 2,436 majority (16,726 votes cast, 42.5% vote share).[22] In 2010, McVey was Parliamentary Private Secretary to then-Employment Minister Chris Grayling.[23] From 2012 to 2013, she was Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Work and Pensions, working under Iain Duncan Smith.[24]

In December 2013, she was formally reprimanded for using House of Commons notepaper and postage to electioneer for the Conservative Party; she apologised and repaid the £300 costs.[25]

David Cameron appointed McVey Minister of State for Employment in the Department for Work and Pensions in an October 2013 reshuffle. McVey was later sworn into the Privy Council on 27 February 2014.[26][27] Shortly after being made Minister for Employment, McVey had the responsibility for the Health and Safety Executive taken away after it was reported that a demolition company had been found to be in violation of health and safety laws while she was director.[28]

In April 2014 McVey apologised for a tweet criticising the Wirral Labour Party that was issued during the Hillsborough memorial service. Social media posts at the time claimed the timing of the tweet showed a lack of respect.[29]

In November 2014, then-backbench Labour MP John McDonnell discussed a "Sack Esther McVey Day" among Labour activists and politicians, saying that "a whole group in the audience" argued 'Why are we sacking her? Why aren't we lynching the bastard?'"[30] The Conservative Party chairman Grant Shapps called for Labour to withdraw the whip from McDonnell.[30] The official Labour Party Twitter feed said McDonnell's comments "don't represent the views of the Labour Party. He speaks for himself".[31] In 2015, speaking to Robert Peston of ITV, McDonnell defended his comments by saying that he was "simply report[ing] what was shouted out at a public meeting". On the same day as his "lynch" remarks, in a debate in the House of Commons, McDonnell criticised McVey for playing the victim and proceeded to call her a "stain of inhumanity".[32]

In the 2015 general election, McVey was defeated by the Labour candidate Margaret Greenwood who gained the Wirral West seat by 417 votes.[33][34]

After losing her seat, McVey took up the post of chair of the British Transport Police Authority from November 2015, on a four-year contract. However, ten days after it was announced that a 2017 general election would take place, McVey resigned the post. Between the elections she also held part-time jobs as a special adviser to Irish lobbying firm Hume Brophy,[35] a privately-held investment group known as Floreat Group,[36] and a fellowship at the University of Hull.[37]

In April 2017, McVey was selected to succeed George Osborne as the Conservative candidate for the June 2017 general election in his safe seat of Tatton.[38] She was elected, with around the same vote share as Osborne gained in 2015 (58.6%) (and with a larger number of votes than Osborne gained in any of the four times he stood in an election at Tatton), but with a decreased majority. In a reshuffle prompted by Sir Michael Fallon's resignation as Secretary of State for Defence in the wake of sexual assault allegations, and in which former Chief Whip Gavin Williamson replaced Fallon and his deputy Julian Smith replaced Williamson, McVey was appointed Deputy Chief Government Whip.[39]

On 8 January 2018, McVey was appointed as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, a post she held until 15 November 2018 when she resigned over the Brexit deal.[40] Labour MP Dan Carden said McVey's appointment "will put fear in the hearts of the vulnerable and disabled. The last time McVey was at DWP she was ejected from parliament by the voters of Wirral West."[41]

In July 2018 it was reported by the head of the National Audit Office (NAO) that McVey had misled parliament over the new Universal Credit scheme by claiming that the NAO report showed that it should be rolled out faster when in fact the report concluded that the roll-out should be paused.[42] She apologised to the House of Commons on 4 July 2018[43][44] amid calls for her resignation.[44] Labour MP Margaret Greenwood said in parliament, "The secretary of state should be ashamed that she has been forced to come to this house again. If she misread this report so badly this brings in to question her competence and her judgment. If she did read the report and chose to misrepresent its findings, she has clearly broken the ministerial code. Either way, she should resign."[45]

McVey said that there were problems with Universal Credit. The Guardian wrote, "Tens of thousands of ESA claimants will receive back-payments of £5,000–£20,000 as a result of what MPs have called a series of 'avoidable' mistakes. The DWP was warned of the error as early as 2014, but failed to take action until 2017."[46]

On 15 November 2018, McVey announced her ministerial resignation over Brexit following May's publication of the draft proposed deal.[47] She was replaced by former Home Secretary Amber Rudd.[48]

It was reported on 27 June 2019 that McVey had received £17,000 for her resignation in severance pay. She was criticised by Labour MP Neil Coyle for taking the payment when she had earlier admitted universal credit had "failings".[49]

In March 2019, she was criticised[50] after tweeting a widely discredited claim made in a 2014 newspaper opinion column about the UK, along with other EU states, being forced to join the Euro from 2020, before later deleting it.[51]

In May 2019, McVey announced her intention to run for the leadership of the Conservative Party when Theresa May resigned, claiming that she already had "enough support" to stand.[39] Later that month, McVey launched Blue Collar Conservatives, as part of her leadership campaign, with MPs such as Scott Mann, Iain Duncan Smith and her partner Philip Davies in attendance.

McVey finished in last place after the first ballot of the Conservative Party leadership candidates and was eliminated.[52]

Following Boris Johnson winning the leadership contest and becoming Prime Minister in July 2019, McVey returned to the cabinet when he made her Minister of State for Housing and Planning.[53] In September 2019, during an event on housing at the Conservative Party conference, she received widespread ridicule after she referred to "3D architects, 3D visionaries – doing it with it on a computer" and suggested that this was a new technology.[54]

McVey later became a correspondent and later a presenter for the right-leaning television channel, GB News. She was criticised by the chair of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, Eric Pickles, for breaking anti-lobbying rules within the Ministerial Code in accepting the job at GB News while she was still the housing minister.[55]

She was dismissed in Johnson's post-Brexit reshuffle.[56]

Since returning to the backbenches, McVey has been a critic of her party's lockdown measures during the COVID-19 pandemic and has repeatedly broken the whip to vote against further restrictions.[57][58] She has also, like several of her Conservative colleagues, gone against her party's agenda by calling for the government to stop building HS2, due to the high-cost, the burden of which she believes will be put on the taxpayer.[59]

McVey endorsed Jeremy Hunt in the July 2022 Conservative Party leadership election. She was his candidate for Deputy Prime Minister.[60]

In May 2023, McVey led six Conservative MPs in a letter warning against giving the World Health Organization new powers.[61]