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Aminister of state is a mid-tierminister of the Crown in theUK government.
Ministers of State are junior to thePrime Minister andSecretaries of State, but senior to aParliamentary Under Secretary of State andParliamentary Private Secretary. The office is defined in theHouse of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 as "...a member of Her Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom who neither has charge of any public department nor holds any other of the offices specified in Schedule 2 to this Act or any office in respect of which a salary is payable out of money provided by Parliament under section 3(1)(b) of the Ministerial and other Salaries Act 1975".[1]
The designation was first made in 1941 forLord Beaverbrook, who was a member of theWar Cabinet and was tasked with creating theMinistry of Production.[2] His successors were effectivelyMinisters without Portfolio, but this changed in 1950 when the first junior minister was appointed to that designation, in theForeign Office, to release some burden from the then-Foreign Secretary.[2]
Ministers of State take charge of a particular part of their department and undertake specific delegated duties.[3] To help to identify these duties, since the 1970s Ministers of State have often been granted a courtesy title which includes the word "for" (rather than "of").[3]
The current Ministers of State are:[4]