(Bloomberg) — UK Members of Parliament elected Harriett Baldwin, a Conservative former Treasury Minister, to head the powerful backbench panel that scrutinizes the government’s economic policies and the Bank of England.
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Baldwin, the favorite among existing members of the cross-party Treasury Committee, beat former Tory leadership contender Andrea Leadsom to the role. She replaces Mel Stride, who was promoted two weeks ago to the Cabinet by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. By parliamentary convention, the panel is led by a member of the ruling party elected in a poll of all MPs.
In her nomination statement, Baldwin drew attention to her strong questioning of BOE Governor Andrew Bailey over high inflation and promised “the same rigor” in her probing of Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt’s upcoming plan to fix the public finances, due on Nov. 17. She added that she was unshackled by “economic ideology.”
“With a government clearly focusing on a different economic strategy and with a crucial fiscal statement due shortly, the work of the Treasury Select Committee could not be more important,” Baldwin said after winning the contest.
Baldwin joined the Treasury Committee in 2019, and previously served as economic secretary to the Treasury between 2015 and 2016, before moving on to other ministerial postings at the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office. Before entering Parliament in 2010, she was an asset manager and managing director at JPMorgan.
Baldwin becomes the second woman to chair the committee after Nicky Morgan, a Tory former Cabinet minister who held the post from 2017 to 2019. Former Health Secretary Matt Hancock had considered standing in this year’s vote before deciding instead to make a television appearance in the reality show I’m A Celebrity Get me Out of Here.
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