IN her latest appointment, Nusrat Ghani MP is Minister of State at the Department of Business and Trade and at the Cabinet Office.
She assumed her new titles after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s re-organisation of government departments and a limited reshuffle on February 7.
The 50-year-old born in Pakistani Kashmir and brought up in Birmingham on a council estate is the only Muslim MP serving in government and already has a veritable rollcall of achievements, as well as being highly-regarded as a conscientious and committed constituency MP for Wealden, East Sussex. She entered parliament in 2015.
One of the undoubted highlights of her ministerial career has been the agreement struck by the United Nation’s International Maritime Organisation to halve carbon dioxide emissions from shipping by 2050 in a deal that would force the industry to redesign fleets.
The April 2018 agreement – dubbed as the Paris agreement for shipping – was reached after two weeks of tough discussion at the 173-member organisation based in London.
Shipping and aviation have been the two sectors that were not covered by the UN climate agreement - a deal struck in Paris in 2015 - to cap global warming at ‘well under’ 2.0 degrees Celsius by the end of this century.
The aviation sector reached an emissions plan in 2016 but shipping has taken longer because its reliance on long-distance ships that run on bunker fuel makes it harder to cut carbon.
Ghani at the time termed the deal as a ‘watershed moment’, adding: “We will work with fellow member states to ensure the shipping industry makes the transition to zero emissions ships as quickly as possible.”
She was able to secure another landmark agreement during that brief stint, a new treaty with the US that seeks to protect the wreck of The Titanic from damage by explorers and tourists.
The remains of the ship lie largely intact 2.5 miles below the surface of the north Atlantic Ocean, after it hit an iceberg in 1912.
There have been growing concerns about visitors taking artefacts, leaving rubbish and even placing plaques in memory of the 1,500 people who died.
An international treaty to limit access was signed by Britain in 2003 but only ratified by the US in November 2019.
Visiting Belfast, where the Titanic was built, Ghani said it was a, “momentous agreement”. It meant the site “will be treated with the sensitivity and respect owed to the final resting place of more than 1,500 lives”, she explained.
The one major blot - and to many a neutral observer completely unfair one - has been her removal as part of a cabinet reshuffle in February 2020. Some commentators believe that an inner circle operating under then Prime Minister Boris Johnson simply didn’t like her because she was Muslim and a practising one.
Ghani told the Sunday Times in January last year that a whip said her “Muslimness was raised as an issue” at one meeting in Downing Street.
She was also told her “Muslim woman minister status was making colleagues feel uncomfortable”, she claimed.
However, even as Ghani returned to the government in September 2022 as part of the Liz Truss ministry, the inquiry by Lord Geidt, the former independent adviser on ministerial standards, remained ‘outstanding’ and then Lord (Christopher) Geidt quit and no successor was appointed which meant the allegations never got to be investigated.
Revealing the episode, Ghani had said that it was like “being punched in the stomach”, and it’s just not a figure of speech when we consider the odds she surmounted, growing up in a working-class area of Birmingham, “expected to be married quite young and live in social housing”.
She was the first woman in her family to be formally educated, attending a state comprehensive school before studying at Birmingham City University for Bachelors in Government and Politics and Leeds University for Masters in International Relations. She also had a stint in the City before joining BBC World Service.
She has many more firsts to her name. An MP from 2015, she is the first female Conservative MP for Wealden, and the first Muslim woman elected as a Tory MP. She has also made history on January 18 2018 as the first Muslim woman to speak from the Government Dispatch Box in the House of Commons.
Commenting on the feat, Ghani wrote on her website: “A century after women got the vote for the first time, I hope that today young people can see that regardless of their background, faith, race, gender or sexuality, there will be a warm welcome on the green benches, and no matter where you are from you can achieve your dreams and ambitions.”
During her parliamentary career, she served on many influential committees, including the former Business, Energy, Industry Select Committee, Foreign Affairs Committee, and Home Affairs Committee. In her role as a member of the formerly constituted Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Select Committee, she has led on a number of enquires, including a probe into the use of Uighur slave labour in UK supply chains.
The inquiry drew a sharp response from China, which announced sanctions in March 2021 against nine UK individuals and four entities, including Ghani.
“This is a wake-up call for all democratic countries and lawmakers that we will not be able to conduct our day-to-day business without China sanctioning us for just attempting to expose what's happening in Xinjiang,” Ghani commented at the time.
Since then, she has also been sanctioned by Russia for her tough stance on the invasion of Ukraine, and for her calls to set up a special tribunal to try those responsible for that act of aggression. This makes her the only woman in Parliament to be sanctioned by two countries.
For her work in raising awareness of the plight of Uighurs in Xinjiang, she was nominated for the first-ever NATO Women of Peace and Security Prize in 2021, finishing runner-up to Speaker Nancy Pelosi of the US House of Representatives.
She was part of the UK delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly from 2020 to 2022 and the Rapporteur of the Science and Technology Committee.
She served as an assistant government whip from January 2018 to July 2019, and then as a government whip till December 2019. Before her comeback to the government, she was serving as the vice-chair of the 1922 committee of Tory backbenchers.
She has also worked for the charities Age UK and Breakthrough Breast Cancer.
