The cabinet reshuffle sparked by two senior ministers resigning in the past 24 hours has seen Dominic Raab, who had been Housing Minister since 9 January, promoted to Brexit Secretary while Kit Malthouse, MP for North West Hampshire, has been appointed as the new Housing Minister.
In 2015, Malthouse welcomed how the Help to Buy scheme had helped hundreds of families in his constituency achieve their dream of buying their own home. He was quoted as saying, “Since I was first active in politics in the 1980s greater levels of home ownership has been a key plank of successful Conservative policy. It started with Right to Buy, and has now grown into Help to Buy, meaning more and more people can now aspire to life in a house of their own.” Last week, as part of a mailout to all MPs in England, HBF wrote to Malthouse to advise him that more than 700 households in his constituency had bought a new home with the support of Help to Buy. This puts North West Hampshire in the top 20 constituencies in the country for Help to Buy completions.
Malthouse had previously been the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Family Support, Housing and Child Maintenance with the Department for Work and Pensions, a role he has held since the January 2018 reshuffle. He is a chartered accountant by trade having worked for Deloitte and Touche and first held political office as a councillor on Westminster City Council from 1998 to 2006 during which he held roles a number of roles including Chief Whip of the Conservative Group, Chairman of the Social Services Committee, Deputy Leader of the Council and Cabinet Member for Finance.
Following his time with Westminster City Council he was elected to the London Assembly holding the seat of West Central. In 2008 he was appointed Deputy Mayor for Policing under Boris Johnson and in 2012 he was appointed as London's first Deputy Mayor for Business & Enterprise, with the task of increasing the number of Londoners in employment, and leading economic and business policy for City Hall. Malthouse was also appointed co-chair of the London Enterprise Partnership.
He resigned his position at London City Hall in 2015 to stand for the North West Hampshire seat in the general election which he won with a majority of 23,943.
Since winning a seat in Parliament he has been involved in the Armed Forces Bill 2015 Select Committee from 2015 to 2016, the Treasury Committee from 2016 to 2018 and the Treasury Sub-committee from 2017 to 2018 and has been involved in All-Party Parliamentary Groups on Bees and Dementia.
