U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has appointed a new culture secretary, Lucy Frazer.
She becomes the eleventh culture secretary in the space of ten years.
Frazer replaces Michelle Donelan, who was appointed last Fall under former Prime Minister Liz Truss. When Sunak replaced Truss he initially kept on Donelan. Today she was given the heave-ho amid a shake-up of his cabinet, as the most senior government ministers are known.
Donelan had replaced controversial politician Nadine Dorries, and set about reversing Dorries’ plans to privatize British public service broadcaster Channel 4.
Unlike her predecessors Donelan (a former Sky and WWE marketing executive) and Dorries (a former actor), Frazer does not have any experience in media. She qualified as a lawyer before becoming a member of Parliament (MP). She previously worked with Sunak when he was Chancellor (pictured above) and she was the financial secretary to the treasury. She has previously worked in government in the justice and education departments.
As part of the reshuffle, Sunak also announced he was reconfiguring some of the departments themselves including DCMS, which stands for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, a large area that covers everything from Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral last year (and will likely have a significant part in King Charles III’s coronation this May) to the Olympics to the Eurovision Song Contest and social media.
With the approval of the King, Sunak has now broken “digital” away from DCMS which will instead focus on the “importance of culture, media and sport to [the] economy and build on U.K.’s position as a global leader in the creative arts.”
Digital will now be looked after by a new department, titled the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology, which is set to be headed by Donelan.