Saffron Walden MP Kemi Badenoch joins Privy Council of King Charles III
The new monarch, King Charles III, has made Saffron Walden MP Kemi Badenoch a member of His Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council.
The Conservative joined new Cabinet colleagues in a constitutional first for the country – appointed under the late Queen Elizabeth II and confirmed by her son as her successor.
At the council meeting on Tuesday evening (Sept 13) she took her place on the board after she was officially sworn one of His Majesty’s principal secretaries of state, for international trade. She was also appointed President of the Board of Trade.
Mrs Badenoch was handed the roles by new Prime Minister Liz Truss after the winner of the Conservative party leadership contest was invited to form a new Government by the Queen on Tuesday September 6. Her Majesty had earlier accepted the resignation of Boris Johnson during an audience at Balmoral in Scotland.
The next day, after Ms Truss named her new Cabinet, the Queen cancelled a virtual meeting of the Privy Council to confirm the appointments. She died the next day at her Scottish home and, after his accession, King Charles completed the process at the Court at Buckingham Palace, swearing Mrs Badenoch and her colleagues in to their new roles and giving them seals of office.
The Privy Council was originally the executive arm of the English government from as early as the 13th century, although its powers declined as political authority shifted to the Cabinet in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. It remains an advisory body to the monarch.
Its members, appointed for life, are known as Privy Counsellors. They include all Cabinet ministers, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Speaker of the House of Commons, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales and now the First Ministers of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
There are currently more than 700 members who can style themselves “the Right Honourable”. However, usually only Cabinet ministers summonsed by the Lord President of the Council attend its monthly meetings.
Today, the main function of the council is to advise the sovereign on the exercise of the Royal Prerogative, and as a body corporate it issues executive instruments known as Orders in Council, which enact Acts of Parliament.
Mrs Badenoch previously served as minister of state for local government, faith and communities and minister of state for equalities from 2021 to 2022 – when Ms Truss was her boss as minister for women and equalities.
In July 2022, Mrs Badenoch resigned from the Government and stood to replace Boris Johnson in the Conservative Party leadership election. She was eliminated from the contest in the fourth round of voting.
The former computer systems engineering graduate from Wimbledon in south-west London spent part of her childhood in the United States and Lagos in Nigeria. She worked as a software engineer and systems analyst before becoming an associate director at Coutts and director of The Spectator magazine.
The married mother of three was a member of the London Assembly before succeeding Sir Alan Haselhurst, now life peer Baron Haselhurst of Saffron Walden, as Uttlesford's MP in 2017.
