Your guide to the department's cast of ministerial characters, and what’s in their in-trays
Lisa Nandy made it clear upon her appointment that her primary interest is in real culture rather than phoney culture wars – using her initial address to staff to declare that the “era of culture wars” was “over”.
“In recent years, we’ve found multiple ways to divide ourselves from one another and lost that sense of a self-confident, outward-looking country which values its own people in every part of the UK,” she said. “Changing that is the mission of this department.”
Nandy, whose love of talking about towns became a meme, told DCMS staff that her intention was for the department to serve the nation by “celebrating and championing the diversity and rich inheritance of our communities and the people in them”.
“Governments don’t make this country what we are – people do,” she said. “And whether it’s through investing in grassroots sport, a visible symbol of what our young people mean to us in every community, or enabling brilliant working-class kids to succeed in drama, dance or journalism – we will be a government that walks alongside them as they create that country I’ve believed in all of my life, but never quite yet seen.”
She also cautioned staff she would be asking more of them than they had ever been asked before. She added: “But I promise you that if you give it your all, I will always have your back.”
Nandy comes in fresh to the brief, being one of the only cabinet picks by Starmer that did not hold the equivalent shadow role in opposition. She took on the culture brief after ex-shadow secretary Thangam Debbonaire was not re-elected in Bristol Central.
Like Nandy, parliamentary under-secretary of state Baroness Fiona Twycross is new to the DCMS remit, taking on the gambling brief. Although her professional background lies in politics, having been a member of the London Assembly and deputy mayor of London, Twycross has a PhD in Scandinavian literature, exhibiting her interest in the wider DCMS policy area.
By contrast, minister of state Sir Chris Bryant and under-secretary of state Stephanie Peacock both served as members of the shadow DCMS team.
Stephanie Peacock was one of five MPs who were told off for celebrating the creation of a women’s parliamentary football team with a kickabout in the House of Commons
Peacock has passed the gambling aspect of her brief to Twycross, but retains both sport and media, as well as gaining civil society and youth.
Bryant will be kept busy, working in two departments – as minister for creative industries, arts and tourism at DCMS; and minister for data protection and telecoms at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. This is an expanded iteration of Bryant’s shadow brief: creative industries and digital. Bryant is the only minister in the department with experience in government, having been a minister in the Foreign Office and deputy leader of the House of Commons under Gordon Brown.
The main piece of legislation the department will be working on is the return of the football governance bill, which fell with the dissolution of the last parliament. The bill seeks to establish an independent football regulator to ensure greater sustainability in the game and strengthen protections for fans.
It is perhaps useful then that the ministerial team has a couple of football fans in it.
Peacock is a keen footballer – she was one of five MPs who were told off for celebrating the creation of a women’s parliamentary football team with a kickabout in the House of Commons.
And Twycross is an Oxford United fan – with a refereeing niece – who recently spoke about not being allowed to play football in school.
Read up on ministers in other departments here