Has anybody seen our Minister? (Part III)
- 12 May 05, 12:00 AM
Your intrepid political correspondent Crippled Monkey here, continuing to sniff out the ongoing saga surrounding the appointment of the new Minister for Disabled People.
So what do we know? Well, Anne McGuire MP has definitely got the job, because the Department for Work and Pensions says as much in its issued on Tuesday. Why then, for a time, did we and everybody else think that Liz Blackman MP was the lucky person who had been appointed?
Sadly, the role of Minister for Disabled People isn't quite high profile enough to gain much coverage in the media, but the Glasgow-based newspaper The Herald today reports that , stating that "the surprise shake-up came after Liz Blackman, a junior minister at the Department of Work and Pensions, declined to take up the post". A paragraph at the end of another report in adds: "Liz Blackman was initially offered that job and Downing Street had announced her appointment on Monday night. But she later turned it down". Hence the confusion.
As this was a political appointment rather than a Department for Work and Pensions matter, I called the Downing Street press office to enquire about the reason for Liz Blackman declining the disability job. Was I about to uncover a juicy bit of scandalous Westminster gossip? Er, no. Apparently, Ms Blackman "decided to concentrate on her constituency work".
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