Penny Mordaunt, the Brexit-backing disabilities minister, has been appointed international development secretary to replace Priti Patel, who resigned from the cabinet on Wednesday night.
Mordaunt’s appointment will appease many Eurosceptic MPs who wanted to see the prime minister preserve the balance of leave and remain supporters in the cabinet after the departure of Patel, who has been one of the government’s most pro-Brexit voices.
Mordaunt, 44, had been widely tipped to replace Michael Fallon as defence secretary when he resigned over sexual harassment allegations last week, but he was succeeded by the former chief whip Gavin Williamson.
Mordaunt, a Royal Navy reservist from a military family, was first elected as the MP for Portsmouth North in 2010 and appeared on ITV’s celebrity diving programme Splash four years later.
May completed her mini reshuffle by moving the MP Sarah Newton from the Home Office to replace Mordaunt at work and pensions. Her responsibilities will focus on disability. Meanwhile, Victoria Atkins, who became a Tory MP in 2015, becomes an undersecretary of state in the Home Office, replacing Newton.
Ministers suggested that the prime minister was building up to a major reshuffle on her own terms in December, or the new year, after Philip Hammond delivers his budget later this month.
The shadow international development secretary, Kate Osamor, said Mordaunt “faces an immediate challenge of restoring integrity to British international development policy after the actions of Priti Patel”.
Osamor said Mordaunt should publicly recommit to the 0.7% of national income to be spent on international development.
“Unlike Priti Patel, who too often used the department to prop up her personal networks and leadership ambitions, Mordaunt must also quickly commit to the central cause of the department: to help the world’s poorest,” she said.
Patel resigned under pressure on Wednesday night and acknowledged that her behaviour “fell below the high standards” expected of a minister after she attended meetings with senior Israeli figures while on a family holiday, without reporting them to Downing Street.
It emerged she had 12 political engagements, including with the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, while visiting the country in August.
When the meetings first came to light, Patel apologised to May and Downing Street said she would stay in post. It was then revealed Patel had attended additional meetings, one in the UK and one in the US, on her return from Israel.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz also reported that during her stay in the country she visited an Israeli military field hospital in the occupied Golan Heights. Britain does not recognise Israeli control of the area seized from Syria.
Patel was summoned back from an official visit to east Africa, flying from Nairobi to attend a crisis summit in Downing Street, where she resigned.
13 August 2017
Priti Patel goes to Israel on what she claims was a family holiday, which she paid for herself.
22 August 2017
Patel met the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The meeting was not authorised in advance and no UK officials were present. She later claimed the Foreign Office was made aware of this meetings and others while her trip was under way.
Meanwhile, Patel’s deputy Alistair Burt and David Quarrey, the British ambassador to Israel, were meeting Michael Oren, a deputy minister at the Israeli prime minister’s office, according to the Jewish Chronicle. According to notes of the meeting, cited by the paper, Oren referred to Patel having had a successful meeting with Netanyahu earlier.
24 August 2017
Foreign Office officials became aware of Patel’s first meetings, according to a statement given to the Commons by Burt on 7 November. He did not mention his own visit to Israel. Hansard quotes Burt telling the Commons: “The Secretary of State [Patel] told Foreign Office officials on 24 August that she was on the visit. It seems likely that the meetings took place beforehand.”
On the same day Patel met Yair Lapid, the leader of Israel’s Yesh Atid party, who describes her as a “true friend of Israel”.
August 2017
On an undisclosed date during her trip, Patel visited an Israeli military field hospital in the occupied Golan Heights, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. If confirmed, this would be a breach of a protocol that British officials do not travel in the occupied Golan under the auspices of the Israeli government.
25 August 2017
Patel leaves Israel after 12 work meetings, during two days of a 13-day holiday. As well as meeting Netanyahu, she also held talks with the public security and strategic affairs minister, Gilad Erdan, and an Israeli foreign ministry official, Yuval Rotem. The meetings were organised by Lord Polak, a leading member of the Conservative Friends of Israel. He accompanied Patel on all but one one of the meetings.
On her return to the UK, Patel inquires about using the UK aid budget to help fund the Israeli army’s humanitarian work in the Golan Heights. The idea is rejected because the UK does not recognise Israel’s permanent presence in the Golan Heights, which were seized from Syria in the 1967 war.
7 September 2017
Patel meets Gilad Erdan, the minister for public security, and is photographed with him on the House of Commons terrace.
18 September 2017
While in New York for the UN general assembly, Patel has another meeting with Yuval Rotem, an official from the Israeli foreign ministry.
2 November 2017
Theresa May meets Netanyahu in Downing Street.
3 November 2017
Patel told the Guardian that the foreign secretary knew about her trip and suggested the Foreign Office had been briefing against her. “Boris knew about the visit. The point is that the Foreign Office did know about this, Boris knew about [the trip],” she admitted telling the paper.
The BBC’s diplomatic correspondent James Landale reported that Patel had undisclosed meetings in Israel without telling the Foreign Office. He quoted one official as saying that Patel had been “pushing to get her hands on the Palestinian Authority aid budget and we have been pushing back”.
6 November 2017
Patel apologises after admitting she gave a misleading account to the Guardian of her trip to Israel. In a statement, she admits holding 12 meetings, including three with Israeli politicians – Netanyahu among them.
She said: “This quote [to the Guardian] may have given the impression that the secretary of state had informed the foreign secretary about the visit in advance. The secretary of state would like to take this opportunity to clarify that this was not the case. The foreign secretary did become aware of the visit, but not in advance of it.”
She does not mention visiting the occupied Golan Heights or the two subsequent meetings in September.
A No 10 spokesman confirms that Patel was rebuked for breaching the ministerial code.
7 November 2017
Patel avoids answering an urgent Commons question about her meetings in Israel because of a “longstanding commitment” to visit Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia. The international development minister Alistair Burt is put up in her place. Burt points out that Patel apologised for the undisclosed meetings. He adds: “The department’s view is that aid to the IDF [Israeli Defence Force] in the Golan Heights is not appropriate.”
Downing Street initially backs Patel but later confirms that the prime minister was not informed about providing aid to Israel during her meeting the previous day. It is suggested Patel failed to disclose her two subsequent meetings in September with Israeli officials. A Whitehall source says: “There was an expectation of full disclosure at the meeting on Monday. It is now clear Priti did not do that. It will now have to be looked at again.” But according to the Jewish Chronicle, it was No 10 who told Patel not to include her meeting with Rotem in New York in her list of undisclosed meetings for fear of embarrassing the Foreign Office.
DfiD confirms previously undisclosed September meetings with Erhad and Rotem in September.
8 November 2017
Patel resigns from the cabinet after being summoned back from a trip to Uganda and Ethiopia by Downing Street. In her resignation letter, released moments after she left No 10, Patel admitted her actions “fell below the high standards that are expected of a secretary of state”.
Before Mordaunt’s appointment, Eurosceptic backbenchers had urged May to preserve the delicate balance of leavers and remainers around the cabinet table, with Patel as one of the few senior Brexit-backing women in government.
After the appointment was announced, the pro-Brexit backbencher Bernard Jenkin, said the appointment was “very well deserved” and that he was delighted for his colleague.
Another senior Brexiter, Iain Duncan Smith, also welcomed the move. “Penny deserves it. She is very good, competent, very presentable, and has a lot of common sense. She is very calm,.
Duncan Smith said the prime minister needed to make the appointment on “competence first” but said it was also right to maintain a gender and Brexit balance.
Duncan Smith said that it was understood before the departure of Patel and Fallon that a reshuffle was coming but said now was not the time.
“When someone goes for a reason that is a failure on their part – it is a never good time for reshuffle,” he said, arguing that the focus would all be on the failure. “That should come at a time of [Theresa May’s] choosing – when she can decide who to bring in and make a statement.”
Members of the aid community offered their congratulations. Kevin Watkins, CEO of Save the Children UK, said: “We look forward to working with the new secretary of state to help deliver this government’s promise to eradicate poverty and save children’s lives.”
Mordaunt has long experience with the military as a reservist who served as armed forces minister; she also has experience in civil society, having been a director for Diabetes UK, the Community Fund and the Big Lottery Fund.
