The former skills minister Andrea Jenkyns will be made a dame for “political and public service” despite serving in the role for just three and half months.
Jenkyns is among several Boris Johnson loyalists to receive honours and peerages in the former prime minister’s resignation honours list.
The MP for Morley and Outwood was first made a minister in July 2022 to replace Alex Burghart who was one of a string of ministers to dramatically resign from Boris Johnson’s cabinet last summer.
Jenkyns was first appointed by Johnson as parliamentary under secretary of state (junior minister) for skills, further and higher education. When Liz Truss became prime minister that September, Jenkyns was reappointed as minister for skills. A month later, she was fired and replaced by Robert Halfon by new prime minister Rishi Sunak.
In her brief stint at the Department for Education, Jenkyns served under two education secretaries, James Cleverley and Kit Malthouse.
Jenkyns said: “I am deeply honoured to have been awarded a Damehood (DBE) for public and political services, having been nominated by our Nation’s greatest Prime Minister since Margaret Thatcher, the Rt Hon. Boris Johnson, it was an honour to serve in his Government as a Minister & a Whip 🇬🇧”
Her appointment as an education minister attracted some controversy at the time of her first appointment to the DfE after footage emerged that showed her raising a middle finger to protestors in Downing Street.
The incident even sparked a complaint from Alison Peacock, the chief executive of the Chartered College of Teaching.
In those three months, Jenkyns found herself the target of scathing remarks from the mayor of the West Midlands, fellow conservative Andy Street, for telling the Local Government Chronicle that she was “not a proponent of elected mayors” and said she wanted to see that adult education powers are “being well used first, before giving more [funding] away”. The Department for Education was forced to row back on her comments.
Jenkyns was in post during the tumultuous period of exam results delays and blunders last summer affecting thousands of BTEC and Cambridge Technical students and some T Level courses.
Before being made a minister, Jenkyns served for ten months as an assistant government whip.
Receiving knighthoods are former cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg and Lichfield MP Michael Fabricant. Former home secretary Priti Patel is also being made a dame and Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen is to be made a lord.
Makes a mockery of the honours and the people that have real achievements to have earned them. Shocking.
Irony is dead!