Earlier this month, Stephen Kinnock was appointed as minister of state for care at the Department of Health and Social Care (DH).

A few days later, the DH announced that Kinnock’s responsibilities would encompass community pharmacy as he took over the remit of primary care.

Kinnock’s appointment shakes up the ministerial style of the last Conservative government, which placed responsibility for primary care with a parliamentary under-secretary of state - a more junior level of minister.

While Kinnock is yet to release any statements that address community pharmacy’s travails, he met with the British Medical Association’s (BMA) England GP Committee chair Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer last week (July 18).

Read more: Stephen Kinnock revealed as new pharmacy minister

He voiced a commitment to move “healthcare out of hospitals and into the community” - albeit “with GPs at the heart of our plans” - in a post to X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday (July 20)

Kinnock’s ambit reflects new health secretary Wes Streeting’s vision of reshaping the NHS to become a “Neighbourhood Health Service, with more care in the community”, as revealed in an exclusive pre-election opinion article for C+D. 

He now looks after adult social care, community health (including neighbourhood health services), end of life and palliative care, health and social care integration, as well as the primary care pillars of pharmacy, general practice, dentistry and eye care.

 

How did he vote on pharmacy cuts?

 

Kinnock was first elected to parliament in 2015, winning the Welsh constituency of Aberavon with 48.9% of the vote share. He was re-elected in 2017 and 2019 with comfortable majorities.

Boundary changes led to his seat being renamed as Aberafan Maesteg and in this year’s July 4 election, Kinnock was re-elected with 49.9% vote share, over 10,000 votes more than his nearest rival.

His voting record shows that he supported the November 2016 Labour motion to protect community pharmacies from funding cuts that was defeated by the Conservative government.

Read more: Political Pills: What awaits the new pharmacy minister?

In opposition, Kinnock held roles as a shadow minister in the Home Office focused on immigration, in the Ministry of Defence, and in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

As an MP, much of Kinnock’s press has focused on the Tata Steel-owned Port Talbot steelworks, which has been threatened with job losses and part closures. He calls it “the beating heart of [his] community”.

Will the new pharmacy minister be close to Keir Starmer's ear? While he won't attend cabinet, Kinnock shares the Prime Minister's passion for football and plays in the parliamentary team.

Political pedigree

 

Kinnock also owns a famous surname. His father Lord Kinnock sits in the House of Lords - he was leader of the opposition between 1983 and 1992 and a Labour MP for the South Wales constituencies of Bedwellty and Islwyn from 1970 to 1995. 

His late mother Baroness Kinnock, a teacher by profession, was a member of the European Parliament from 1994 to 2009 and served as a minister of state in Gordon Brown’s government between 2009 and 2010.

Read more: Pharmacist defeats GP as voters issue a potent prescription for Labour

For many years, Kinnock would have been best known as Helle Thorning-Schmidt’s husband, the Social Democrat Prime Minister of Denmark from 2011 to 2015. They met while he was studying at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium, and have two children together according to his website.

Prior to his election as an MP, Kinnock worked in the private sector for “over twenty years”, living in “Brussels, Russia, Sierra Leone and Switzerland” and acquiring fluency in five languages, his website says.

Read more: Wes Streeting: 'Sunak says he wants to put pharmacies first, but he's left the sector to rot'

Hopefully he will stick around in the role longer than the previous pharmacy minister Dame Andrea Leadsom, whose tenure lasted just eight months from November to the July election.

Including Dame Andrea, there have been nine pharmacy ministers since March 2019, when Steve Brine resigned from the role.

C+D approached the DH for further comment.