TREVELYAN
Anne-Marie
Belinda

• 1. Early life and career
• 2. Parliamentary career
• 3. Positions and campaigns
• 4. Controversies
• 5. Personal life

Anne-Marie Belinda Trevelyan (née Beaton; born 6 April 1969) is a British politician serving as Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade since 2021. She served as Secretary of State for International Development in 2020. A member of the Conservative Party, she has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Berwick-upon-Tweed since 2015.

Early life and career

Trevelyan was born in London on 6 April 1969, the daughter of Donald Leonard and Katherine (née Bougarel) Beaton. Trevelyan was privately educated at St Paul's Girls' School, Hammersmith. She subsequently studied at Oxford Polytechnic.

She qualified as a chartered accountant in London with Price Waterhouse (a predecessor firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers) and worked in PwC's corporate finance department before moving to Northumberland in 1996. She is a former Governor of Northumbria Healthcare Trust and of Berwick Academy. Reports prepared by Trevelyan's "Dual the A1 Campaign" were submitted to the consultation to make the road a dual carriageway.

She unsuccessfully stood as the Conservative candidate in the Morpeth North ward of Castle Morpeth Borough Council in 1999. She subsequently stood as the Conservative candidate in the Hartburn ward of Castle Morpeth Borough Council in 2003, but failed to get elected.

Trevelyan unsuccessfully stood in the 2010 general election as the Conservative candidate for Berwick-upon-Tweed, achieving a swing from the Liberal Democrats to Conservatives of 8.3%. In so doing, she reduced Sir Alan Beith’s majority from 8,632 to 2,690.

Parliamentary career

Backbencher

At the 2015 general election, Trevelyan was elected as the MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed, gaining the seat for the Conservatives with a 9.6% swing, after the sitting MP Sir Alan Beith stood down. She was re-elected with an increased majority in the 2017 general election.

In June 2015, Trevelyan was appointed Vice-Chairman of the newly created All-Party Parliamentary Group on Forestry. In Parliament, Trevelyan served on the Public Accounts Select Committee between July 2015 and May 2017.

In November 2015, she was appointed to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. On 27 October 2016 during Prime Minister's Questions the then-Prime Minister Theresa May praised Trevelyan for her work on the Armed Forces Covenant. In January 2018, Trevelyan was appointed as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Gavin Williamson in the Ministry of Defence.

In January 2016, the Labour Party unsuccessfully proposed an amendment in Parliament that would have required private landlords to make their homes "fit for human habitation". According to Parliament's register of interests, Trevelyan was one of 72 Conservative MPs who voted against the amendment who personally derived an income from renting out property. The Conservative government had responded to the amendment that they believed homes should be fit for human habitation but did not want to pass the new law that would explicitly require it.

An outspoken Eurosceptic, Trevelyan resigned as a Parliamentary Private Secretary in November 2018 over her disagreement with Theresa May’s draft Brexit withdrawal agreement.

Ministerial positions

Minister for Defence Procurement

On 27 July 2019, Trevelyan was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence Procurement in the first Johnson ministry. She was promoted to Minister for the Armed Forces on 16 December 2019. As Minister for the Armed Forces, she met with the United States Secretary of the Army Ryan D. McCarthy at The Pentagon on 11 February 2020.

Secretary of State for International Development

On 13 February 2020, Trevelyan was promoted to Secretary of State for International Development during the first cabinet reshuffle of the second Johnson ministry. Prior to her appointment, Trevelyan expressed apparent scepticism about the value of foreign aid on a number of occasions.

After the Beirut explosion of 4 August 2020, the UK government, through Trevelyan's Secretary of International Development Department, aid-funded the UK Emergency Medical Team (UK EMT) were sent to help. The UK also gave £5m in emergency support, £3m of it for the British Red Cross. As International Development Secretary, Trevelyan represented the UK at a donor event hosted by UN secretary general António Guterres and French president Emmanuel Macron.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in August 2020 Trevelyan set up the Vulnerable Supply Chains Facility, its funding being £4.85 million from UK aid and £2 million from businesses. The premise was that the Department for International Development, UK supermarket and fashion businesses such as Morrisons, Tesco, Marks & Spencer and Primark, and charities such as Care UK, The Fairtrade Foundation and the Ethical Trading Initiative, work together to improve working conditions and support access to healthcare and health information for workers in developing countries, with a focus on countries such as Myanmar, Bangladesh, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Rwanda and Ghana.

Trevelyan's department was merged with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on 2 September 2020, when Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab assumed responsibility for a new department, named the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. This made her the last Secretary of State for International Development. Following the merger, Trevelyan left the government.

Return to backbench

Trevelyan returned to the backbench between September 2020 and January 2021 during which time on the 7 November 2020, Trevelyan was appointed the UK International Champion on Adaptation and Resilience for the COP26 Presidency.

Return to government

On 8 January 2021, Trevelyan returned to government after being appointed Minister of State for Business, Energy and Clean Growth at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.[30]

Positions and campaigns

Political positions

Euroscepticism

In June 2015, Trevelyan joined the Conservatives for Britain group, a Eurosceptic group within the Conservative Party which subsequently moved closer to outright opposition to British membership of the European Union. She later joined the European Research Group – the primary Eurosceptic lobbying group within Parliament.[35] Trevelyan advocated a vote in favour of Brexit for the 2016 EU membership referendum.

In March 2018, she attended a protest in London organised by the Fishing for Leave group against proposed access to British waters for EU fisherman up to 2021. The event included the UKIP MEP Nigel Farage. The Independent reported that Trevelyan faced calls[by whom?] for her sacking as a ministerial aide for attending the event in defiance of an order from Conservative whips for party MPs not to take part.[37] On 15 November 2018, Trevelyan resigned from her post as a Parliamentary Private Secretary over Theresa May's draft EU withdrawal agreement.

Environmental

Trevelyan opposes the ban on fox hunting.[38] She supports fracking, including voting in 2016 in support of fracking under Northumberland National Park.[39] Between 2010 and 2012 Trevelyan wrote a series of tweets denying global warming, including stating "[there is] clear evidence that the ice caps aren’t melting after all" and "global warming isn’t actually happening".

National campaigns

Trevelyan is a member of the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme and campaigns to improve mental health services for veterans in Northumberland.[41]

Trevelyan campaigns for reducing plastic packaging.[42]

Local issues

In 2015 Trevelyan secured the support of life sciences minister George Freeman for pharmaceutical company Covance which had a site in her constituency.[43]

Trevelyan campaigned for dualling the A1 road. In 2007 she set the Dual the A1 campaign group to raise government awareness. In 2014 then-Prime Minister David Cameron announced an initial £290 million investment to upgrade the road.[44]

Trevelyan has campaigned for improving rural broadband.[45]

Trevelyan campaigns for reopening the Harbottle Surgery.[46] and bringing other investment to the county.

In September 2020 she commented on the rejection of the opening of an open cast mine at Druridge Bay, a seven-mile stretch of Northumberland Coast from the seaport town of Amble to the village of Cresswell:

This decision from the Secretary of State is incredibly welcome to all of us who have campaigned to protect our precious coastline, and the community in Druridge Bay who have had the spectre of this proposition hanging over them for a number of years. The Prime Minister was clear when he brought forward our goal to stop producing coal to 2024, that this Government will honour its commitments to a cleaner, greener future, and our target of net zero by 2050. This long-fought battle to protect our local environment has been a culmination of years of work by local people, groups and politicians of all parties, coming together to work for the future of their community and I pay tribute to everyone who has played their part in safeguarding our incredible landscape for future generations.

Controversies

Political campaign finances

In May 2016, it was reported that Trevelyan was one of a number of Conservative MPs being investigated by police in the 2015 general election party spending investigation, for allegedly spending more than the legal limit on constituency election campaign expenses. In May 2017, the Crown Prosecution Service said that while there was evidence of inaccurate spending returns, it did not "meet the test" for further action.

In April 2018, Trevelyan was criticised by the Alnwick Labour Party in the wake of the Poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal over claims that a Russian businessman gave almost £50,000 to fund her 2015 general election campaign. The Labour Party questioned why the Conservative Party was accepting large donations from such sources. Trevelyan stated that the man in question was now a British citizen who had invested significantly in the region, while she had personally not received any funds from Alexander Temerko, with funds going to the Berwick-upon-Tweed Conservative Association.

Reporting of Kate Osamor
 
In November 2018, Trevelyan referred Labour shadow minister Kate Osamor to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, on the grounds that Osamor's behaviour "failed to uphold" the code of conduct for MPs, after Osamor continued to employ her son Haringey Councillor, Ishmael Osamor, as a senior communications adviser, despite her son pleading guilty to possession of drugs valued at £2,500. Osamor denied any wrongdoing and called the referral "politically motivated".

Sinophobia allegations
 
Labour MP Sarah Owen who accused Trevelyan of Sinophobia over her WhatsApp message
In May 2020 the Labour MP and first British female MP of Chinese descent Sarah Owen accused Trevelyan of Sinophobia after Trevelyan posted a WhatsApp message of a split fortune cookie, saying in broken English "You not have coronavirus", captioned "Just received my Covid-19 rapid test kit from China. Soooooo relieved!", with a follow-up message of "Just for Bob" and a winking emoji referring to Conservative MP Bob Seely, who responded by sending a love heart and smiling emoji. Owen said: "If Anne-Marie Trevelyan doesn't understand why this sort of humour was left in the 1970s, I would be happy to explain it to her." Seely responded to Owen by saying "It was a well-meaning joke at my expense and I didn't think anything of it", referring to his campaign against the Chinese tech company Huawei. Trevelyan responded to Owen by saying "It was not my intent to cause any offence, and I am truly sorry if I did so".

London accommodation

In November 2021 The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) revealed Trevelyan's accommodation expenses were £136,590.26 on a flat in London since she was elected in 2015, despite the fact she had already had a flat in London which she does not use. the criticism of her accommodation expenses were part of the parliamentary second jobs controversy following Owen Patterson's resignation from Parliament.

Personal life

Trevelyan lives in London and Northumberland. She is divorced with two teenage children, in October 2017, she said that one of her teenage sons might not have voted for her if he had been old enough to vote.[56] She previously lived in Netherwitton Hall, a Grade II Listed Country House near Morpeth with her former husband John Trevelyan, owner of the Netherwitton Hall Estates.

She took part in the Singing for Syrians concert at Westminster in December 2017.