The government has announced its new health minister after Andrew Gwynne was sacked over the weekend following the emergence of allegedly offensive comments on WhatsApp.
Mr Gwynne left the government over the weekend and apologised for comments made in the group “which I deeply regret and would not make today”.
Ashley Dalton has been appointed in the health brief, while Douglas Alexander will now serve jointly in the Cabinet Office as well as the Department for Business and Trade, Downing Street confirmed on Monday.
Mr Gwynne reportedly said he hoped a 72-year-old woman would soon die after she asked a councillor about bin collections, and joked about a constituent being “mown down” by a truck.
Here, The Independent takes a look at the new parliamentary under-secretary of state for public health and prevention.
Parliamentary career
Ms Dalton worked for Southend-on-Sea Council for 17 years, before entering national politics.
She was Labour's candidate in Rochford and Southend East in the 2017 and 2019 general elections, but lost to the Conservative’s James Duddridge both times.
Ms Dalton was selected as the candidate in the October 2023 West Lancashire by-election, triggered by the resignation of long-serving Labour MP Rosie Cooper.
She was re-elected in the July 2024 general election with 50.5 per cent of the vote.
Before serving in government, the West Lancashire MP was the shadow women and equalities minister when Labour was still in opposition.
Personal life
Her website describes her as a “mum, a carer, a cancer survivor and a proud Lancashire lass”.
In a campaign video from 2023, she talks about not only facing breast cancer herself but losing her husband to kidney cancer in 2018. She said his cancer was “caught too late”.
Her new appointment as health minister comes just over a month after she announced she had been diagnosed with breast cancer for a second time.
Views on gender
The Labour MP for West Lancashire identifies as LGBTQ+, and in a 2023 interview with The Guardian, she said: “I’m a gay woman that’s been involved in politics for about 20 years so I’ve been on the receiving end of some pretty unsavoury comments and abuse.”
Ms Dalton said in an exchange on Twitter in 2016 that “we shouldn’t have gendered bathrooms at all”.
In another social media conversation in the same year – before she was an MP – Ms Dalton signalled her support for gender self-identification.
Asked if people should take someone seriously were they to identify as a llama, Ms Dalton suggested they should do so with “dignity and respect” in an exchange which appears to have since been deleted.
The prime minister’s official spokesperson sought to distance Sir Keir Starmer from the past remarks of the new minister.
“I can’t speak to comments made by people prior to being in government,” he said when asked about the social media posts.
Asked if Ms Dalton’s position on single-sex toilets reflected government policy, the spokesman replied: “No, the position remains clear. The PM has been clear before that single-sex spaces will and should be protected.”
