
Esther McVey
Born in Liverpool, McVey was placed in foster care for the first two years of her life and was then brought up by her biological family. She was privately educated at The Belvedere School before going on to study at Queen Mary University of London and City, University of London. After working at her family's construction business, she became a television presenter, co-presenting GMTV with Eamonn Holmes.
McVey first entered the House of Commons as MP for Wirral West at the 2010 general election. She served in the Cameron–Clegg coalition as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Disabled People from 2012 to 2013, prior to serving as Minister of State for Employment from 2013 to 2015. She was sworn into the Privy Council in 2014 and attended Cabinet after that year's reshuffle. At the 2015 general election she lost her seat; she subsequently spent eighteen months serving as Chair of the British Transport Police Authority before returning to parliament following the 2017 general election, succeeding former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne in the Tatton constituency.
McVey served in the second May ministry as Deputy Chief Whip from 2017 to 2018. She was appointed Work and Pensions Secretary in January 2018. In July, she apologised for misleading the House of Commons over the new Universal Credit scheme by claiming a National Audit Office report showed it should be rolled out faster, when in fact the report concluded the roll-out should be paused. She resigned in November 2018 in opposition to Theresa May's draft Brexit withdrawal agreement. She founded the Blue Collar Conservative parliamentary caucus, before standing in the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election, but was eliminated in the first round after finishing in last place with nine votes. After the contest, she attended Cabinet as Minister of State for Housing and Planning until Boris Johnson's first Cabinet reshuffle.
After leaving the Johnson Cabinet, McVey returned to the backbenches. She subsequently, with her MP husband, jointly hosted weekly programmes on GB News titled Friday and Saturday Morning with Esther and Philip; she also regularly wrote for the Daily Express. In the November 2023 cabinet reshuffle, she was appointed Minister of State without Portfolio by Rishi Sunak, her third Cabinet role, reported to have been tasked with "leading the government's anti-woke agenda".
Biography from the Wikipedia article Esther McVey. Licensed under CC-BY-SA. Full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Known For
Recently Updated Shows

Press Your Luck
A game of wits, strategy and high stakes as contestants try to avoid the iconic WHAMMY for a chance at life-changing cash and prizes.

Mrs. Brown's Boys
Comedy starring Brendan O'Carroll as loud-mouthed Irish matriarch Agnes Brown, whose favourite pastime is meddling in the lives of her six children.

Snapped
Who are these women and what drives them to kill? Oxygen's hit true crime series, Snapped, profiles fascinating cases of women accused of murder. Did they really do it? And if they did, why? Whether the motivation is revenge against a cheating husband, the promise of a hefty insurance payoff, or putting an end to years of abuse, the reasons are as varied as the women themselves. From socialites to secretaries, female killers share one thing in common: at some point, they all snapped. Each episode of Snapped chronicles the life of a woman who has been charged with murder. These shocking but true stories turn common assumptions about crime and criminals upside down, and prove that even the most unlikely suspects can be capable of murder.