Your guide to the department's cast of ministerial characters, and what’s in their in-trays
The Home Office sprang into action following the election, launching a new border security command within days of Labour coming to power. This was one of the six “first steps for change” Labour promised in its election manifesto.
The government also wasted no time in scrapping the Rwanda scheme, with Keir Starmer doing this on his first full day as prime minister and home secretary Yvette Cooper ordering an audit of the scheme in the hope of clawing back some of the cash spent on it. And the Home Office quickly announced it would scrap the controversial Bibby Stockholm asylum barge.
Labour also reaffirmed its commitment to tackling issues related to crime and policing by announcing four bills in the King’s Speech. These included the terrorism (protection of premises bill) also known as Martyn’s Law, which was promised but not delivered by the Conservative government.
Cooper and Starmer were also forced to take swift action when violent far-right riots swept the nation following the stabbings of children in Southport. They announced a new ‘National Violent Disorder Programme’ to clamp down on the unrest.
The Home Office ministerial team is packed with frontbench and home affairs experience. Cooper was shadow home secretary from 2011-2015 and 2021-2024 – and chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee in the period in-between. She also has a wealth of experience across government, including being work and pensions secretary and chief secretary to the Treasury in Gordon Brown’s government, as well as several junior ministerial offices beforehand. Under Brown, she and her husband Ed Balls were the first couple to sit in the cabinet together. Before becoming an MP in 1997, Cooper’s jobs included working for Bill Clinton on his presidential campaign and being chief economics correspondent for The Independent.
Cooper pledged ahead of July’s election that she would run a “hands-on Home Office” as home secretary.
She is joined by Dame Diana Johnson, another leading voice in the home affairs policy space. Johnson, who is the department’s minister for policing, fire and crime prevention, had been chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee since 2021, having previously been shadow minister for crime and security between 2011-2015.
The team also includes Labour veteran Dame Angela Eagle, who is the second longest-serving female Labour MP sitting in the House of Commons and has a long list of government and shadow positions. Eagle is minister for border security and asylum, her first Home Office brief since 2002, when she was a junior minister in the department.
Lords minister Lord George Hanson also has plenty of government experience. Elected as an MP in 1992, he secured a myriad of government roles, including a year as minister for security, counter-terrorism, crime and policing under Brown from 2009-10. Hanson, who lost his seat as an MP in 2019, was appointed to the House of Lords by Starmer after July’s election.
Dan Jarvis keeps hold of the senior minister for security brief, having held the shadow version of the role for the last year. Jarvis has a military background, serving for 15 years in the Parachute Regiment.
The team is also not short of "star factor" – Jess Phillips, one of parliament’s highest-profile MPs, makes a return to the Labour frontbench and home affairs brief as minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls. Phillips served as shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding from 2020 until she resigned after voting against the party whip to support a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in November 2023. She has an extensive background in domestic abuse services, having worked at Women’s Aid Federation for a number of years before being elected as an MP.
Seema Malhotra, whose first shadow brief, in 2015, was in a Home Office role focused on tackling violence against women and girls, completes the team as minister for migration and citizenship.
Read up on ministers in other departments here