The call from Number 10 came at two o’clock last Tuesday afternoon. Would I be available to meet the Prime Minister in half an hour?
With no inkling of what exactly might happen at that point, I set off to walk from my Westminster office across Whitehall to Downing Street.
I was joined by my backbench colleague Lucy Fraser, the MP for South-East Cambridgeshire who like me was first elected in 2015 and is a good friend. I have to say it was comforting to have someone alongside as we walked up to that famous front door past the phalanx of journalists and cameras.
Inside No 10, after a brief wait, I was called into the Cabinet Room and sat across the green Cabinet Table from the Prime Minister. She said she would like to offer me the role of Parliamentary Under Secretary in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government which I was immediately honoured and delighted to accept. It was a very special moment.
Mrs May explained to me the important role of the new ministry with its renewed focus on housing and the vital work the expanded ministerial team has ahead of it to deliver the new homes and strong local communities the whole country needs.
After another brief meeting with new colleagues and my fellow Yorkshire MP the Government’s Chief Whip Julian Smith, it was off to the ministry’s offices in Marsham Street just a few minutes away to start my new job as a member of Her Majesty’s Government.
That set in train a whirlwind series of meetings and briefings as I got to grips with my responsibilities, including meeting the staff I will work with and the other members of the six-strong ministerial team including the Secretary of State Sajid Javid and the new Minister for Housing, Dominic Raab.
My new job title is the Minister for Local Government and my brief is wide, including policy relating to and the funding of all local authorities, council workers’ pensions, adult social care, parks and green spaces and troubled families.
Local government finance may sound a bit dry but it underpins the services provided by our local council whether it is emptying our bins, maintaining most of our roads and caring for the elderly.
Local government reform is important too. One of my first tasks is to implement the detail of a Government initiative to allow local councils to keep 75 per cent of business rates paid in their area to spend as they think best. Across the country that amounts to billions of pounds that local councils will decide how to spend on local services.
But being a Government Minister in no way lessens the importance of my constituency. On Thursday evening as normal I was back home in North Yorkshire and on Friday holding an advice surgery in Hawes and visiting the Wensleydale Creamery to hear of their exciting development plans. I also opened the new forest school at High Bank Nursery at Stapleton in the far north of the constituency and visited the Spence family’s large dairy farm at Brompton.
I needed a quick haircut so called in to see Hollie at Holl & Co in Northallerton. Recently, Hollie did a 24-hour Cutathon and deserves congratulations for raising £1,500 for CLIC Sargant. After that I headed home to spend a cosy Friday night (and the rest of the weekend) in with the voluminous contents of my new ministerial red box. What a week!