Special report: Coalition special advisers

The Prime Minister
Senior adviser Steve Hilton is probably the best known of the Number 10 advisers, and is generally acknowledged as a key influence on the PM. His background is in marketing – he worked for M&C Saatchi on Tory election ads in 1992 and 1997 – and he’s worked closely with Cameron for many years. He is known as a champion of the Big Society agenda.

Another long-term Cameron friend and colleague is chief of staff  Ed Llewellyn – an old Etonian, Oxford graduate and alumni of the Conservative Research Department (CRD), where the PM worked for five years. Even before Llewellyn took up his role as chief of Cameron’s cross-party office he had good links with the Lib Dems, having worked for Paddy Ashdown in Bosnia. He also has strong international links from his time working in Brussels and for Chris Patten in Hong Kong.

Deputy chief of staff Kate Fall, another friend of Cameron’s from Oxford and a fellow CRD alumni, is Cameron’s gatekeeper, managing his time and working with Samantha Cameron’s personal assistant Isabel Spearman to ensure the PM’s diary dovetails with his wife’s.

Sharing an office with Hilton is his fellow senior adviser Polly Mackenzie – a former journalist and Cambridge graduate who was Nick Clegg’s chief speechwriter and policy adviser before she was recruited into Number 10 to provide the Lib Dem perspective on policy. According to the Tory blog ConservativeHome, Hilton and Mackenzie form the main points of political liaison with the civil servants staffing the Number 10 implementation unit.

Another key member of the policy team is Rohan Silva, a former civil servant who left the Treasury in 2006 to work for George Osborne. A close ally of Hilton, he’s a proponent of “new technology in government, transparency and environmentalism”, according to a 2010 Evening Standard article.

James O’Shaughnessy is the director of research and policy. A PPE graduate from Oxford, O’Shaughnessy spent time as music teacher and in advertising before joining think-tank Policy Exchange, where he wrote a number of influential papers on Tory education policy – including a 2005 paper outlining proposals for a pupil premium, which was picked up by both coalition parties.

Another Policy Exchange alumni is Gavin Lockhart, who worked as a management consultant for four years before joining the think-tank in 2006. There, he was responsible for crime and justice research and also worked on health policy, before leaving in 2009 to join the Tory policy team.

Two remaining Tory policy advisers are Peter Campbell and Sean Worth. Campbell spent years at the CRD, where he worked with John Major for a number of years. When Cameron was leader of the opposition, Campbell gained the nickname ‘stats man’ for his contributions to PMQ planning sessions.

Meanwhile, Worth has also had longstanding links with the Conservative Party: he has held two jobs at its HQ, spending the intervening time as an adviser on financial inclusion and social policy for the Association of British Insurers. He now advises on health policy and oversees Number 10’s communications with the health department.

The final policy adviser is Tim Colborne, who worked for the Lib Dems as home affairs adviser for four years, leaving in 2006 to work in public policy roles for a number of organisations with Italian connections before being recruited as a spad after the election.

Number 10’s two newest appointments are Andrew Cooper, director of strategy, and Craig Oliver, director of communications. Cooper has a background in social market research and was director of the CRD, later becoming the party’s chief strategist before leaving in 2003 to found polling company Populus. He is described by Tory blogger Tim Montgomerie as an “über-über moderniser”.

Oliver, apparently approached personally for the job by his predecessor Andy Coulson, was formerly head of global news at the BBC. He oversaw coverage of the 2010 election for the BBC, and of the 2005 election for ITV.

Now working closely with Oliver is the PM’s political press secretary Gabby Bertin, who’s been supporting Cameron since his leadership campaign in 2005. With a background in the City, she has also worked as an adviser to defence secretary Liam Fox. In 2009, Cameron told journalist Dylan Jones that Bertin is the closest person to Malcom Tucker – of Westminster spoof The Thick Of It – in his office.

Deputy director of communications Lena Pietschprovides a Lib Dem angle on comms: she was formerly Clegg’s press secretary, and sometimes speaks with him in German when they don’t want earwigging journalists to follow their conversations.

Press secretary Alan Sendorek has worked with many key Conservative MPs, including Michael Gove; he left Gove’s team to bolster Cameron’s press operation ahead of the general election. He is supported by deputy head of press Sean Kemp, formerly head of press at the Lib Dems. Kemp worked for several years on the Basildon Echo alongside Andy Coulson, and is said to have a hard-hitting, questioning style which helped Nick Clegg prepare for leadership debates.

Tim Chatwin, special adviser on strategic planning, provides political input into planning the government news grid. He was previously an education and senior home affairs adviser for the Conservative Party, and worked closely with Hilton to plan strategy. The press team is completed by another long-term Cameron aide, former Sky Television employee Liz Sugg– who runs events for the team – and Michael Salter, head of broadcast.

Deputy Prime Minister
Nick Clegg’s chief of staff, Jonny Oates, has worked on and off for the Liberal Democrats over the past few years – interspersed with spells as a lobbyist.

Oates told newspaper PR Week that he was politicised at age 15 after seeing a report on the Ethiopian famine. He boarded a plane to Africa with only £10 in his pocket in order to help out, but had to be rescued and sent home by missionaries.

His first formal position with the Liberal Democrats came in 1994, when he won a seat on the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames Council. He became deputy leader of the council, and in 1997 served as an election agent for prominent Liberal Democrat and current business minister Edward Davey.

Oates has worked for public affairs companies Bolland & Associates and BPPA, leaving the latter in 2007 to become the Liberal Democrats’ director of policy and communications. He returned to BPPA in 2008 before rejoining the Lib Dems in the run-up to the general election.
Oates’ deputy as chief of staff – and a special adviser to Nick Clegg on political relations –

Alison Suttie has known the Lib Dem leader since he was a Member of the European Parliament. There, she worked as spokesperson for the Liberal group, before becoming spokesperson for the President of the European Parliament, Pat Cox.

Returning to the UK in 2006, Suttie became chief of staff to Menzies Campbell while he was leader of the Liberal Democrats. After winning the leadership Nick Clegg retained her services and, prior to the formation of the coalition government, she was the party’s election manager.

In government, Suttie was initially then-Scotland secretary Danny Alexander’s special adviser, but moved to serve Nick Clegg when David Laws resigned over his parliamentary expenses claims and Alexander became chief secretary to the Treasury.

The DPM’s special adviser charged with helping Clegg think through longer-term policy development is Richard Reeves, the former head of think-tank Demos. Reeves is credited with developing Clegg’s attempt to woo ‘alarm clock Britain’ – an approach apparently modelled on Nicholas Sarkozy’s successful ‘early-rising France’ election campaign.

At Demos, Reeves worked to change the think-tank’s image from that of a New Labour organisation into one that sought to encourage liberal ideas in the Conservative party. He has also worked as a journalist for the Guardian and the Observer.

In an interview with CSWpublished in the run-up to the general election (p12, 10 March 2010), he expressed concerns that the aim of deficit reduction might conflict with the devolution of spending power to local bodies. Calls for large areas of spending responsibility to be devolved, he said, were likely to be greeted by a Treasury response of: “Not on your nelly – bring it back and squeeze it!”

James McGrory has been Nick Clegg’s press spokesman ever since the DPM’s office was reorganised and beefed up last summer. Previously, he was the justice and home affairs adviser in 10 Downing Street’s cross-party team of spads.

McGrory has worked for the Liberal Democrats for the past few years, having been an adviser to current energy secretary Chris Huhne; former colleagues say he is particularly interested in energy policy. They characterise his manner as “casual and very confident” – but his current role is a hectic one. A government source says that he is “constantly thrown things and has to react to them and speak to the media”. Communications work between the office of the deputy prime minister and Number 10 is also unrelenting, and everything has to be cleared by both offices before publication. “The last thing you want to do in a partnership is to pull a fast one on them; it all has to go through the structures,” the source says.

Finally, Oxford graduate Chris Saunders is a former lobbyist for Cicero Consulting, a public affairs company for the financial services industry. He’s a longstanding economic adviser for the Liberal Democrats, and before the 2010 election was Vince Cable’s chief economics adviser: he was quoted in the Wikileaks diplomatic cables as telling the US Embassy that David Cameron is “fake” and “out of touch”.

First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
Two spads per department is customary, and eyebrows were raised in August 2010 when William Hague appointed a third: Christopher Myers, who had worked for him as a constituency activist. Following revelations that the two men had shared a hotel bedroom during the campaign, Hague issued a statement rejecting “untrue and deeply distressing” rumours of a gay affair and Myers resigned in September. He was replaced the following month by Will Littlejohn, son of outspoken Daily Mail columnist, Richard.

The younger Littlejohn took over from Myers as press and public relations adviser – a role that he had performed for Hague in opposition before being overlooked when the coalition took power. In the interim, he worked as an adviser to environment secretary Caroline Spelman.

Hague’s chief of staff, Dr Arminka Helic, has provided him with advice since 2005. Helic, a Bosnian-born Muslim, fled to the UK during the Balkan conflict of the 1990s and has worked for the Conservatives since 1999 as a defence adviser to a succession of shadow secretaries of state including Michael Ancram, Iain Duncan Smith, Bernard Jenkin and Nicholas Soames. At the FCO she provides specialist advice on Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Americas, the Balkans and national security issues.

In 2009 Helic was ranked number 61 in the Telegraph newspaper’s list of the 100 most influential right-wingers, and she also holds the distinction of a brief mention in the leaked American diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks. Educated at the University of Sarajevo and the London School of Economics, she has also worked as a risk analyst for a London-based venture capital firm.

Denzil Davidson has also worked for Hague since 2005, operating as his specialist adviser on Europe – a role that he continues to fulfil at the FCO. He has been employed by the Conservative Party since 2001 and was formerly head of the international affairs section of the Conservative Research Department, the party’s in-house think-tank. Educated at Edinburgh University, he is a fluent French speaker and a member of the Franco-British Council, which seeks to promote closer working between the two nations.

Chancellor of the Exchequer
George Osborne has two official special advisers: Poppy Mitchell-Rose and Ramesh Chhabra. Mitchell-Rose was educated at Tony Blair’s old school, Fettes College, before going to Durham University. She worked as a journalist for BBC and Reuters and was an adviser to Liam Fox when he was shadow health secretary, before joining Osborne’s team in 2006. Her long-term boyfriend Ben Wright is a BBC journalist and the son of Labour MP Tony Wright.

Chhabra, the chancellor’s press spokesman, graduated from Hull University in 2002, standing unsuccessfully to become a councillor in Kingston upon Hull before joining the Conservative Party HQ as a local government adviser. He later became press aide to secretary home secretaries David Davis and then Dominic Grieve, before joining Osborne’s team.

Osborne also has two key advisers who do not appear on official spad lists: Rupert Harrison and Eleanor Shawcross. Both were advisers to Osborne in opposition, and have now been appointed to the chancellor’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Harrison became Osborne’s chief economic adviser in 2006, after four years at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (where his boss was Robert Chote, current head of the Office of Budgetary Responsibility). He was head boy at Eton and – like George Osborne, Jeremy Hunt, William Hague, Chris Huhne and Dominic Grieve – studied at Magdelen College, Oxford.

Shawcross, daughter of the former Sunday Times journalist and royal biographer William Shawcross, is a former management consultant who has also worked for London mayor Boris Johnson. Her particular interest is in financial services and business growth: in opposition, she worked with Lord Sassoon (now a Treasury minister) to develop financial services policy and to cost Conservative policy options.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury
In the 2010 election, the Liberal Democrat MP Julia Goldsworthylost her Camborne and Falmouth seat by just 66 votes. She recovered quickly, however, and became special adviser to chief secretary Danny Alexander.

Though Goldsworthy has rapidly built her expertise in Westminster, her career to date is a short one: she graduated from Cambridge University in 2000 with a history degree, before going on to work for Truro MP Matthew Taylor. She was elected to Parliament herself in 2005, and shadowed the chief secretary’s role for two years – good preparation for her current Treasury position.

Low-key and said by colleagues to be a “good listener who doesn’t try to dominate meetings”, Will de Peyer has been a Liberal Democrat economics adviser for some time. He started work for the party in 2004, staying until 2007 when he left to take a job in banking.

De Peyer returned to the Liberal Democrats in 2009, advising Vince Cable and Lords Oakeshott and Newby on economic policy. Until the 2010 election he wasn’t shy of attacking the Conservative Party: he once tweeted “I’ve never voted Tory,” following this up with “and I never will because they kill kittens (allegedly)”. His Twitter feed is now defunct.

Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
A former producer of BBC Radio 4’s Today and PM programmes, David Hass provides media advice to justice secretary Ken Clarke in addition to a policy role concentrating on prisons and probation. In opposition, he was shadow chancellor George Osborne’s senior adviser and press spokesman. He graduated from the University of Leeds.

Kathryn Laing holds the courts, legal aid, human rights and international affairs briefs at the Ministry of Justice. After graduating from Pembroke College, Oxford, she worked in the media as a documentary distributor, editing and selling current affairs programmes and footage to broadcasters, before joining the Tories in opposition as deputy chief of staff to Clarke.

Secretary of State for the Home Department and Minister for Women and Equality
The Home Office’s special advisers, Nick Timothy and Fiona Cunningham, are long-time Conservative Party employees. They share responsibility for advising home secretary Theresa May on departmental matters, without any particular split of responsibilities, according to a department spokeswoman.

Before taking on her current post after the general election, Cunningham worked in the Conservatives’ home affairs media team as press secretary to Chris Grayling – then the shadow home secretary, and now minister for employment in the DWP. Grayling appointed Cunningham to this post from the business lobby group the British Chambers of Commerce, where she was head of communications. But her links to the Tories go back further still: prior to joining the BCC, Cunningham worked in Conservative Central HQ as a press officer for Andrew Lansley, then the shadow health secretary.

Cunningham’s colleague Nick Timothy also has a long track record with the Conservatives. He previously worked as deputy head of the party’s policy think-tank the Conservative Research Department, where he was responsible for much of its day-to-day running, and was a member of the team assisting David Cameron in opposition as he prepared for prime minister’s questions. He was also a strategist in the campaign teams for the successful Crewe & Nantwich and Norwich North by-elections.

Secretary of State for Defence

Like the foreign secretary, defence secretary Liam Fox has managed to accrue three special advisers: Luke Coffey, Oliver Waghorn and Hayden Allan.

Coffey, a former US Army captain, has worked for Fox since May 2007. His appointment after the general election as a special adviser to Fox was the source of some controversy following media revelations of his apparently close links to US intelligence services. Coffey is a director of the London chapter of the Council for Emerging National Security Affairs, a US security think-tank with members drawn from the CIA and other military defence agencies.

Coffey’s involvement in British politics began in September 2006 with a stint in the office of the Tory MP Mark Harper. In his current role, Coffey is responsible for advising on policy in the US, Europe and Middle East, and for specific policy areas such as operations and armed forces welfare.

Oliver Waghorn works as a second policy adviser to Fox, covering areas such as defence procurement, science and technology, and finance. Alongside this role, he is responsible for advising on policy in areas of the world outside those covered by Coffey.

Waghorn was previously based in the House of Commons as a research assistant to Gerald Howarth MP, supporting him in his role as shadow minister for defence procurement and the RAF. Howarth is now minister for international security. Before this post, Waghorn was an MoD civil servant, working as an analyst.

Fox also has a press adviser, Hayden Allan. Described in one national newspaper as one of the Tories’ “most accomplished media operators” and a “calming authoritative figure who is respected by journalists”, Allan was the former deputy head of press for the Conservatives.
He moved to the MoD in August last year, reportedly at the specific behest of the prime minister following media reports of clashes between the MoD and Number 10. He returns to his old patch: before taking up the deputy head of press role at Tory headquarters in 2007, Allan worked as a press officer for Fox.

Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills
Giles Wilkes is unusual among Liberal Democrat special advisers in that he never formally worked for the party before the formation of the coalition government. But Wilkes was instead the chief economist at Centre Forum, a liberal think-tank closely affiliated with the party. He also spent ten years working for financial derivatives trading company IG Group.
He studied philosophy and economics at Oxford, graduating in 1994. He also holds an MBA from London Business School and a masters in global history from the London School of Economics.

Before the election, Wilkes opposed the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto pledge to scrap tuition fees, blogging that it “truly sucks” and was unaffordable. A last public glimpse of this frank and humorous style came in his final post on social networking site Twitter, which reads: “Have learnt essential lesson on being a Spad – 1: Don’t try out new shoes when having to sprint to No 10 for a meeting. Feet = bleeding stumps.”

Business secretary Vince Cable’s other spad is Katie Waring, who studied history at Leeds University and graduated in 2004. Following this, she started to work for the Liberal Democrats, beginning in Brussels working for Fiona Hall – the Member of the European Parliament for the North-East of England.

From 2006-7, Waring worked for David Laws MP as an adviser on work and pensions policy. After 2007, she worked for the Liberal Democrats’ central office as a policy and communications officer.

Contrary to information available online, Waring has been Vince Cable’s special adviser ever since the general election. She is his media point person, and also advises him on higher education policy. Waring is in a relationship with another special adviser, James McGrory.

Minister of State for Universities and Science, BIS
The special adviser to the higher education minister David Willetts is Nick Hillman. A lifelong Conservative, Hillman first tried to become a party member at 15 – but was too young to join. He went on to undertake an MA in contemporary British history at Queen Mary University – where he was an active student politician – and a PGCE in history at Cambridge University.
After graduating, he worked for five years as a teacher, then as a pensions adviser for the Association of British Insurers. But his interest in politics soon resurfaced, with jobs at think-tanks: he worked as a research fellow at Policy Exchange, and had a seat on the Centre for Social Justice’s Economic Dependency Group.

Hillman has also written for think-tanks Politeia, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Bow Group. He took a job as Willetts’ chief of staff before the election, before unsuccessfully standing as the Tories’ parliamentary candidate for Cambridge.

Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
Philippa Stroud has known work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith for years, and until the election – at which she stood for Parliament in Sutton and Cheam, losing to incumbent Liberal Democrat Paul Burstow – headed the think-tank that they co-founded in 2003, the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ). She has been joined in the DWP by the CSJ’s former policy director Charlotte Pickles, who has been seconded to the department as an expert adviser.
At the CSJ, Stroud oversaw the development of an ambitious set of welfare reform policies now being put into practice by IDS, and helped soften the Conservative stance on the issues around poverty and crime: in a pre-election interview with CSW, she said of gang crime that “you can’t arrest your way out of these problems”, and noted that “nothing stops a bullet like a job.”

A source who’s worked with Stroud in the past reports that she has a “very consultative” approach, and stresses her emphasis on evidence-based policy: “She follows the evidence through to make sure it’s a basis for policy that works”, the source says, adding that her approach is “not politically motivated; it’s evidence-based”.

Stroud works alongside media adviser Susie Squire. The daughter of Welsh rugby international Jeff Squire, she was educated in Newport and Johannesburg before reading English at Cape Town University. Following an internship, she took an events-management job at free-market EU business group the Stockholm Network, then in 2008 moved to lobby group the Taxpayers’ Alliance as political director.

Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change
Joel Kenrick is a longstanding aide to energy secretary Chris Huhne. He was Huhne’s parliamentary researcher from 2007 to 2008, when his boss was the Liberal Democrats’ environment spokesman, and also assisted the MP with his shot at the leadership of the party.
Kenrick then left to work as a climate change policy adviser for the Confederation of British Industry, before returning as Huhne’s special adviser in 2010. He studied international relations at the LSE, and won a Fulbright scholarship to study at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Another longtime Lib Dem adviser, Duncan Brack was the party’s head of policy when Paddy Ashdown was leader. He left that job in 2005 to work for the think-tank Chatham House, first on its sustainable development programme and latterly on its energy, environment and development programme.

Brack is firmly on the left wing of his party and in 2007 edited the book Reinventing the State: Social Liberalism for the 21st Century. This was seen as a response to the Orange Book, which was edited by David Laws and contributed to by Nick Clegg – and set out a freemarket approach for the party to follow.

Secretary of State for Health
Jenny Parsons, educated at Edinburgh University, has been chief of staff to Andrew Lansley ever since 2006, when Lansley shadowed his current role. Parsons’ responsibilities include developing, coordinating and managing health strategy in Parliament and the media.

According to Parsons’ CV, her particular interests lie in public health and NHS staffing. Prior to joining the Conservative Party, she worked in the media (including a spell working for Newsweek in Pakistan in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks) and for a political consultancy. She also served as treasurer to the Conservative Party’s Human Rights Commission.

In June 2010, Lansley added PR man Bill Morganto his team as special adviser on policy. Lansley and Morgan already knew each other well: they worked together between 2005 and 2007, when Morgan was a Tory adviser working on a wide range of Conservative health policies and assisting the shadow health secretary prepare for parliamentary questions.

In between his spells working for Lansley, Morgan joined PR firm AS Biss – which later became Mandate PR – to head up its health division. A former colleague at the firm says that Morgan has a sharp policy mind, allied with fierce loyalty to his bosses.

Secretary of State for Education
Dominic Cummings was involved in an attempt to rejuvenate the Conservative Party some years ago – but the seeds he sowed failed to prosper. After gaining a first class history degree at Oxford, Cummings worked as an investment adviser in Russia, before becoming head of research for anti-euro campaign group Business for Sterling at its launch in 1999. In 2002, Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith hand-picked Cummings as the Tories’ head of strategy. However, despite – or maybe because of – his efforts to start the modernisation of the party, he didn’t last long: he resigned after just eight months, and described IDS as “incompetent” in a 2003 article.

As the shadow education secretary, Michael Gove appointed Cummings as an adviser; and following last year’s election, he wanted to bring his trusted lieutenant into government with him. But the move was blocked by Conservative head of communications Andy Coulson – a veto that lasted until Coulson’s own fall, when Cummings finally joined Gove’s team.

Gove’s other adviser, Henry de Zoete, is a member of the de Zoete banking family, and was at Eton in the year above Prince William. Following spells at libertarian think-tank Reform and Portland PR (where he assisted Joanna Lumley with her successful Gurkha residency rights campaign), he joined the Conservative Party press office in January 2010 with the education brief and subsequently followed his boss into Whitehall.

Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government
Sheridan Westlakewent to the Royal Grammar School in Guildford and has both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from Oxford University, where he acted as press officer for the Oxford Union. He was elected as a councillor to Guildford Council in 2003, and re-elected in 2007 – after which he became vice chairman of licensing. As a councillor, he campaigned against what he saw as inappropriate development and for the protection of the city’s green belt.

For more than a decade, Westlake spent his days working in the Conservative Research Department, rising to become deputy director. In this role, he participated in the preparation of the Conservative Party manifesto for the 2010 election.

Working alongside Westlake is Giles Kenningham, who has a background in the media: he started out as a producer for Bloomberg, became a business reporter for Independent Radio News, then moved to ITN – where he produced their flagship news programmes, and ended up as a writer/producer on the Lunchtime News. He was recruited by the Conservative Party in 2006, with a brief to boost the party’s image in local press, and went on to act as press officer for Francis Maude, Theresa May and communities secretary Eric Pickles in the run-up to the election.

While Number 10’s spads have also made regular appearances in the newspapers, Pickles’ special advisers were at the heart of what is probably the most damaging story concerning special advisers since the general election. An anonymous briefing to the Times newspaper attacked Electoral Commission chair Jenny Watson, apparently explaining the decision not to renew her place on the Audit Commission board. The outburst reportedly prompted cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell to write to the PM, calling the incident “unacceptable” and insisting that he rein in his government’s advisers.

Secretary of State for Transport
Siân Jones is transport secretary Philip Hammond’s policy adviser, a role that she also performed in opposition when he was shadow chief secretary to the Treasury. She worked in the CRD from 2005-07 as an adviser on work and pensions before moving to Hammond’s  officeshortly after his move to the Treasury portfolio. She studied modern languages at Cambridge and has also worked ain management consultancy and journalism.

Paul Stephenson acts as Hammond’s media spad. He was formerly head of research at Open Europe, a think-tank which argues that the EU requires radical reform based on economic liberalisation and a more flexible structure. Stephenson is a specialist in EU regulation and the co-author of publications including A Guide to the Constitutional Treaty and Less Regulation: 4 Ways to Cut the Burden of EU Red Tape.

Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Formerly chief of staff to Caroline Spelman in her role as shadow communities and local government secretary, Simon Cawte first joined Spelman’s staff in 2005 and worked for her when she was chairman of the Conservative Party. His CV includes a spell working for Michael Howard when he was shadow chancellor, as well as a stint on Tory MEP Robert Goodwill’s staff.

Cawte hit the headlines in 2008, when he was caught up in a row involving accusations that Spelman had paid him to do national party work using public funds ring-fenced for constituency staff. Described by some who know him as having a “cheeky sense of humour”, he’s said to consider the Conservatives as his “extended family” and has been involved in the party since his days studying politics at Newcastle University. Observers describe Cawte as a highly effective administrator who is friendly and productive, but not a strategist.

Amy Fisher is a former communications director at think-tank Policy Exchange, which has close links to the Conservative Party. She has also worked as a Conservative Party press officer, and did a stint with Google’s public relations team – where she was responsible for policy communications in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Fisher, who took a degree in history at Cambridge University, is viewed as an astute operator and her appointment as Defra special adviser has been seen, in some quarters, as a “canny move”. Gabriel Milland, the current head of press at Policy Exchange, says Fisher is strong on media relations and describes her as “very capable and extremely personable, with a good sense of humour”. He adds: “Amy has an impressive knowledge of the media and how it works, as well as a sophisticated sense of the way Westminster operates.”

Secretary of State for International Development
Philippa Buckley and Richard Parr both worked for Andrew Mitchell for a number of years while in opposition, before becoming his spads last year. Buckley studied at Cambridge University and worked for another Tory MP before joining Mitchell’s office. She completed a masters in international development from SOAS while working as a researcher for Mitchell.

Buckley and Parr don’t clearly demarcate their responsibilities, but Parr is said to take a more behind-the-scenes, policy-focused role, while Buckley more often accompanies Mitchell on trips and to public meetings – where she can, according to an NGO source, be “pretty vocal”.

One senior civil servant who works with them says they have already built good relationships within the department. Both, he says, are “not afraid to challenge the secretary of state based on things they are hearing from civil servants”. They will even do this in public meetings, he says, and this “has made a lot more civil servants wiling to share issues with Philippa and Richard”.

He praises Parr’s interpersonal skills in particular, and says Buckley has “very good political instincts”. Though both are well attuned to Andrew Mitchells’ thinking and priorities, she “in one sense is politically sharper; she’s more of a [political] party animal”.

Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland secretary Owen Paterson once called his chief of staff “one of the foremost experts on Northern Ireland politics”. And indeed, Jonathan Caine has been building his knowledge of the province’s unique political ecology for decades: back in 1991-5, he was the special adviser to two consecutive Northern Ireland secretaries, Peter Brooke and Sir Patrick Mayhew.

Caine went on to become assistant director in the Conservative Research Department, specialising in Northern Ireland. Although he left the Conservatives in 2007 to join lobbying firm Bell Pottinger Public Affairs, he rejoined the party in 2009 to assist with the Tory effort to win seats in Northern Ireland in an ill-fated electoral pact with the Ulster Unionist Party. He wrote on the Conservativehome website that he is “a convinced unionist – who still believes post-devolution that unionism is part of the Conservative Party’s DNA.”

Secretary of State for Scotland
After studying politics at the University of Edinburgh, Euan Roddincompleted a postgraduate qualification in international relations at Johns Hopkins University’s Bologna campus. While there, he published an article examining the relative success of the Scottish Liberal Democrat and Labour parties in Scotland’s 1999-2003 coalition administration. He concluded that the Lib Dems were more successful in terms of gaining party advantage, and suggested this was due to their more decentralised party structure.

Roddin’s knowledge of coalition politics was broadened when, after a brief spell working in primary healthcare policy for the British Medical Association, he became a researcher for Liberal Democrat MSP Margaret Smith, who at the time was the party’s Holyrood chief whip during the second Lib-Lab coalition.

In 2007 he became a speech writer for Lib Dem leader Menzies Campbell, and when Campbell resigned Roddin went on to work briefly with Nick Clegg, leaving in 2008 to work in Brussels for the pan-European Association of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE). He was the speechwriter for ALDE’s group leader and then a press officer for the organisation, before returning to the UK in 2010 to join Scotland secretary Michael Moore’s office as special adviser. Roddin’s particular areas of interest include constitutional affairs and politics, energy politics, public policy and European and American politics.

Secretary of State for Wales

Richard Hazlewoodhas two journalism qualifications, and has worked for a number of media organisations including BBC Radio Five Live, the South Wales Argus and the South Wales Echo – spending more than four years at the latter as a political correspondent. In 2004, he became a press officer for the Welsh Conservative Party.
While helping the Conservatives to prepare and campaign for the general election last year, Hazlewood was in training for a charity bike ride: in September, he completed a 500km ride from London to Paris in four days, raising more than £2000 for Kidney Wales Foundation.

Secretary of State for Culture, Media, the Olympics and Sport
Adam Smith has worked for culture secretary Jeremy Hunt for years. Someone who’s worked with Smith says that he’s more interested in the sports section of his brief than the arts and culture side, which he finds “uninteresting”. Our source also says that Smith is difficult to work with – but he’s clearly managed to build up some useful contacts in the sporting world: transparency data released by his department shows that he has frequently dined with sporting institutions since starting in his role, as well as attending the MTV Europe awards.

Smith’s colleague Sue Beeby is, like him, a longstanding press aide to Jeremy Hunt. She spent three years working at Conservative Central HQ before the 2010 election, both for Hunt and for current immigration minister Dominic Grieve.

Minister for the Cabinet Office
Francis Maude’s special adviser is Laura Trott; in opposition she worked as his chief of staff, developing the policies that he is now so energetically putting into practice. And while her boss has moved into the Cabinet she has also embarked on a political career, securing a seat on Camden council.

There, Trott received a warm welcome from Camden’s Tory group: the Camden New Journal reports that she was “ushered into the Conservatives’ safest ward”, taking a seat in the Frognal and Fitzjohns area. She has since joined four council committees, including those covering education and housing, and promises to use her knowledge of efficiency in government to bear down on council waste.

Minister of State in the Cabinet Office
Martha Varney has worked for Oliver Letwin since at least 2008 – she was a research assistant before becoming his special adviser in May 2010, and also worked at Tory HQ. Varney played a key role in helping to compile and proof-read policy contributions to draft the Conservative Party manifesto. And during the campaig she remained a key source of policy guidance, acting as a point-person for policy information and fact checking while Cameron’s team was on the road. She continues to work closely with the Number 10 team.

Varney read philosophy and politics at the University of York, graduating in 2005. While there she was also a member of the University Boat Club, and in her final year served as a press officer for the University Athletics Union.

Reporting by Suzannah Brecknell, Joshua Chambers, Ben Cook, Colin Marrs, Matt Ross, Stuart Watson and Ben Willis.