Andrew Mitchell

Andrew John Bower Mitchell (born 23 March 1956) is a British politician currently serving as the Minister of State for Development and Africa since 2022.

In February 1975, he joined the Royal Tank Regiment as a second lieutenant on a Short Service Limited Commission (a commission designed for teenagers applying to Oxford or Cambridge University after leaving the sixth form), spending time in Cyprus where his unit was carrying out peacekeeping duties.

In October of that year, he transferred to the Territorial and Army Volunteer Reserve.

He resigned his commission on 9 February 1977.

He went to the University of Cambridge, where he read History at Jesus College.

He was Chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association in the Michaelmas Term of 1977.

Mitchell studied History at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he was elected President of the Cambridge Union in 1978.

He served as President of the Cambridge Union 1978–79, after graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1978, later proceeding Master of Arts.

Mitchell worked for Lazard, the investment bank, where he worked with British companies seeking large-scale overseas contracts.

Mitchell was the only Conservative member of Islington Health Authority (IHA) in north London during the 1980s, and in that capacity, he called for the IHA to make greater use of competitive tendering in the allocation of service contracts.

After unsuccessfully contesting Sunderland South at the 1983 general election, Mitchell entered Parliament in 1987 at the age of 31 as MP for Gedling, Nottinghamshire, serving in the House of Commons concurrently with his father.

He was elected to the House of Commons for Gedling in Nottinghamshire at the 1987 general election.

In 1988, under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, he became PPS to William Waldegrave, who was Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

In 1990, he became PPS to John Wakeham, who was Secretary of State for Energy.

In 1992, under John Major, he became Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party, and in the same year was appointed as an Assistant Government Whip.

In 1993, he became a Government Whip.

He served in the second Major government as a Lord Commissioner of the Treasury from 1994 to 1995 and as a junior minister at the Department of Social Security from 1995 to 1997.

In 1995, he became Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Social Security, a position he held until 1997.

Mitchell lost his seat to the Labour Party's Vernon Coaker at the 1997 general election.

Mitchell lost his Commons seat with Tony Blair's Labour victory at the 1997 election.

A member of the Conservative Party, he has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sutton Coldfield since 2001 having previously served as the MP for Gedling from 1987 to 1997.

In 2001, he contested Sutton Coldfield in the West Midlands, a safe seat for the Conservatives, and was returned to Parliament.

He was returned to Parliament at the 2001 election as the MP for Sutton Coldfield, near Birmingham.

He held no shadow ministerial or organisational position under the leadership of Iain Duncan Smith, but in November 2003, under new leader Michael Howard, he became Shadow Economic Affairs Minister.

In 2004, he became Shadow Home Office Minister, primarily dealing with police matters.

Mitchell was appointed to the Shadow cabinet in 2005 as Shadow Secretary of State for International Development.

In this role, he founded Project Umubano, a Conservative Party social action project in Rwanda and Sierra Leone in central and west Africa.

In May 2005, Mitchell was appointed to the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for International Development.

Following Howard's decision to stand down as leader following the Conservatives' 2005 general election defeat, Mitchell ran the unsuccessful leadership campaign of David Davis, but retained his Shadow Cabinet position under the winner of the leadership election, David Cameron.

In that role, Mitchell visited a number of countries in Africa and Asia containing some of the worst poverty in the world, such as Sierra Leone, Ghana, Ethiopia, Chad, Eritrea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Kenya, Thailand, Cambodia and Burma (Myanmar).

In many of these places, he created video reports detailing local conditions and some of the NGO projects aimed at ameliorating them.

Whilst in Burma, Mitchell challenged its Government by raising evidence of systematic human rights abuses in the country, and its continued imprisonment of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Mitchell served in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for International Development from 2010 to 2012 and then briefly as Government Chief Whip in the House of Commons in late 2012.

Under the coalition government of David Cameron, he served as Secretary of State for International Development from 2010 to 2012.

In the September 2012 cabinet reshuffle, he was appointed Chief Whip.

Amid public pressure due to the Plebgate scandal, Mitchell resigned from the government the following month, and returned to the backbenches.

In 2022, after serving on the backbenches for 10 years, Mitchell made a return to government as Minister of State for Development and Africa following the appointment of Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister.

He attends Cabinet in that role and deputises the foreign secretary, Lord Cameron, in the House of Commons, giving statements and answering questions on behalf of Cameron.

Mitchell was born at Hampstead in north London, the son of Sir David Bower Mitchell, a future Conservative MP of 33 years, and Government Minister.

He was educated at Ashdown House School and Rugby School, where the self-confessed "stern disciplinarian" earned the nickname "Thrasher".