Sajid Javid is knighted in New Year Honours

Former Cabinet minister Sajid Javid has been knighted in the New Year Honours list.

Mr Javid, who is standing down at the next general election, had an extensive career in Government serving in six cabinet roles, and becoming the first British Asian to hold one of the great offices of state.

He joins several politicians in receiving honours in the annual list including Labour’s Dame Margaret Beckett, who is standing down at the next election after 40 years representing Derby South.

Taking on the roles of home secretary, chancellor and health secretary during his career, he also put himself forward for the Tory leadership twice.

It was his sensational resignation from Boris Johnson’s cabinet, together with Rishi Sunak, that spelled the beginning of the end for the former prime minister’s premiership.

He had previously left his chancellor role abruptly in 2020 after being told he must sack all his advisers if he wished to keep his job.

Mr Javid is the son of a bus driver who arrived in England from Pakistan in the 1960s with just a pound in his pocket.

Born in Rochdale and raised in Bristol, he went to a state school and studied economics and politics at Exeter University.

Dame Margaret, who was the first woman to serve as foreign secretary, will become a Dame Grand Cross after already being made a Dame Commander in 2013.

First elected in Lincoln in 1974, the 80-year-old served as acting leader of the Labour Party in 1994 after the sudden death of John Smith.

Labour’s Siobhain McDonagh, a party stalwart who has been an MP since 1997, has also been recognised and will be made Dame Commander. Her sister Margaret McDonagh, who died earlier this year, was Labour’s first female general secretary.

Ms McDonagh said being notified of the honour was a “bit of a surprise” but she hopes it is a recognition of the importance of the work MPs do in local communities.

She thinks her sister would have “been proud of kind of the work that I have done over the last 26 years as MP for Mitcham and Morden… the place we were born and brought up in”.

Her constituents, she added, have been “magnificent” since Margaret’s death in June.

Local constituency work, Ms McDonagh said, is “not the glamorous end of politics” but “the sort of politics that can make a real difference”.

The Labour MP said she intends to celebrate with all the party workers who help support her.

“You can only get your message out and do things if you can bring people together to help you.

“They do it because they believe in a set of values and making our country better and I hope this will be an honour for them.”

Makerfield MP Yvonne Fovargue, who sits on the Privileges and the Standards committees, becomes a CBE.

Her Labour colleague, Mayor of Bristol Marvin Rees has been made an OBE.

Conservative backbencher Mark Garnier, who represents Wyre Forest, has also been made an OBE.

Erewash MP Maggie Throup, who served as vaccines minister between 2021 and 2022, becomes an OBE.