Alison McGovern appointed as Minister of State for Social Care



Alison McGovern MP was appointed Minister of State in the Department of Health and Social Care on 22 July 2026. She was previously Minister of State for Local Government and Homelessness between 6 September 2025 and 22 July 2026.

She has represented her hometown in Parliament since 2010, first for Wirral South and then for Birkenhead following boundary changes in 2024.

When Labour formed a government in July 2024, she was appointed Minister of State for Employment at the Department for Work and Pensions. Under Keir Starmer’s leadership, she returned to the frontbench in 2020 during the opposition years, leading on labour market policy after three years on the Treasury Select Committee responsible for scrutiny of the UK’s monetary and financial institutions.

She previously chaired Progress (now Progressive Britain), the organisation for Labour’s progressives, and as a pro-European, took a leading role in cross-party backbench liaison on Brexit. Before joining the House of Commons, she was Deputy Leader of the Labour group in the London Borough of Southwark. She is a regular on broadcast and in print on political and economic topics. Outside of politics, she is a season ticket holder at Liverpool Football Club and a regular at Birkenhead Parkrun. She studied philosophy at University College London and economics at Birkbeck College London.

https://www.gov.uk/government/ministers/minister-of-state--238