Paul Boateng
Paul Boateng, Baron Boateng of Akyem in the Republic of Ghana and of Wembley in the London Borough of Brent PC ( born June 14, 1951 in Hackney, London, England ) is a British lawyer, diplomat and politician of the Labour Party in 2002 as Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Chief Secretary to the Treasury), the first black cabinet minister of Britain was.
Life
Origin and election to the House of
Paul Boateng, the son of a Scottish woman and politician Kwaku Boateng, who was in the 1960 information, interior and education minister of Ghana in the governments Kwame Nkrumah studied post-school law at the University of Bristol and was after graduation as a barrister and legal consultant.
In the late 1970s he began his political career in the Labour Party and was initially 1979 to 1983 Member of the Subcommittee on Human Rights in the National Executive Committee of the party from 1981-1986 Member of the Greater London Council, in which he at the same time Chairman of the Police Committee and deputy Chairman of the Committee for ethnic Minorities was. In addition, he was in the time from 1984 to 1986 member of the Committee of the Labour Party for crime and police.
After he had first candidate in the general election June 7, 1983 in the constituency Hertfordshire West unsuccessfully for the Labour Party for a seat in the House of Commons, he was elected in the general election of 11 June 1987 as a member of the House of Commons and represented there by 2005, the constituency of South Brent. During his long parliamentary membership, he was between 1989 to 1992 spokesman for the opposition Labour Group for the Treasury and Economic Affairs, and then to 1997, opposition spokesman for the office of Lord Chancellor.
After the election of the Labour Party in the lower house elections of 1 May 1997, he was Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Health and then in October 1999, Minister of State at the Home Office, the UK Home Office. In this he was responsible only for crime policy and then from 1999 to 2001 Deputy Minister of the Interior, where he was also responsible for young people from 2000 to 2001. In June 2001 he moved to the Treasury, where he was first Financial Secretary ( Financial Secretary to the Treasury). At the same time he was a member of the House Committee on public budgets.
Cabinet Minister, High Commissioner and the House of Lords member
On 29 May 2002 Prime Minister Tony Blair appointed him as Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Chief Secretary to the Treasury), and called for the first time a black man to a post in the rank of a cabinet minister in the British government.
After retiring from the House and from the Government on 11 May 2005 Boateng became High Commissioner in South Africa and has held this post until May 2009. Shortly after his return to Britain, he became in 2009 a Trustee of the Museum of London.
On 1 July 2010 he became a life peer with the title of Baron Boateng of Akyem in the Republic of Ghana and of Wembley raised in the London Borough of Brent to the peerage, and thus a member of the House of Lords.
Boateng, who is also a member of the Board of the London-based private military and security company Aegis Defence Services, in 2011 a member of the Board of Governors of the London School of Economics and Political Science.