Stephen Kinnock and Karin Smyth have today been appointed as ministers of state in the Department of Health and Social Care.
Smyth is the minister of state for health, while Kinnock is the minister of state for care.
They were among 18 state ministers appointed by Downing Street today.
The appointments follow Wes Streeting’s as secretary of health and social care on Friday.
Kinnock (pictured left) is the son of Neil Kinnock, who previously headed the Labour party and Baroness Glynnis Kinnock, a former MEP who died earlier this year.
He is married to Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the former Social Democrat prime minister of Denmark from 2011 to 2015.
Kinnock has been the MP for Amberavon in Wales since 2015.
He was previously the shadow minister for immigration and prior to that was shadow minister for the armed forces and shadow minister for foreign and Commonwealth affairs.
Kinnock said via X: “Truly honoured to be appointed Minister of State for Care.
“Looking forward to working with Secretary of State Wes Streeting and the team, as we seek to meet the multitude of health and social care challenges that Britain faces, after 14 difficult years.”
Smyth (pictured right) was previously a shadow minister for health as well as shadow minister for Northern Ireland. She is the MP for Bristol South, a position she has held since 2015.
Before becoming an MP Smyth worked in the NHS as a manager, most recently for the NHS Bristol Clinical Commissioning Group.
DWP
Two ministers of state have also been appointed at the Department for Work and Pensions in the form of Alison McGovern and Sir Stephen Timms.
The work and pensions secretary of State is Liz Kendall.
Kendall has been the MP for Leicester West since 2010, and has been shadow secretary for the DWP since September 2003.
McGovern is the MP for Birkenhead, and was previously the MP for the former seat of Wirral South from 2010.
McGovern was the shadow minister of state for the DWP from 2021 and has held several other positions including opposition whip in 2013 and shadow minister at the department for culture, media and sport.
Timms is the MP for East Ham and has been since 1994.
He was previously chairperson of the work and pensions select committee and was the shadow minister for work and pensions from 2010 to 2015.
Timms held several minister of state positions in the previous Labour government. That included in 2008, when Timms was minister of state at the DWP department and prior to that from 2005 to 2006.
Earlier in his political career he was the minister of state for the department of social security in 1999 and the undersecretary at the same department in 1998.