New Prime Minister Andy Burnham has announced Miatta Fahnbulleh as Energy and Net Zero Secretary with Heidi Alexander remaining as Transport Secretary.
Fahnbulleh replaces Ed Miliband, who has moved to the Foreign Office. She was previously Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government between 6 September 2025 and 12 May 2026.
She was also previously Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero between 9 July 2024 and 6 September 2025.
In addition, Fahnbulleh was the Chief Executive of the New Economics Foundation from 2017 to 2023 and previously worked at the IPPR as the Director of Policy and Research. She was the Head of Cities in the policy unit at the Cabinet Office from 2011 to 2013.
Previously, she has spoken of her commitment to a green economy and green growth. Speaking to LabourList in 2025, she said the route to long-term savings in energy was “weaning ourselves off fossil fuels and wholesale on the global market, which is why we are moving to deliver clean home-grown energy at such pace”.
She added that “people were quite sceptical if we could get to clean energy by 2030”, but “everyone has been staggered at the pace that we are driving through the things we need to do; removing the ban on onshore wind, the biggest ever auction that’s been delivered for renewables.”
The news comes as Heidi Alexander is set to continue as Transport Secretary. She was appointed by previous Prime Minister Keir Starmer into the role in November 2024.
If she remains in post until the next election, she could be the longest running Transport Secretary in more than a decade.
The previous three secretaries have all lasted considerably less than two years, and before that Grant Shapps and Chris Grayling were in post for around three years.
In the past 20 years there have been 13 secretaries in the role. The longest to hold the post was Patrick McLoughlin from 2012 to 2016.
The only person to make it through a General Election cycle as purely a Transport Secretary was the first ever incumbent of the cabinet-level role and separate department, Bill Rogers, who was appointed in September 1976 by James Callaghan, and made it to the May 1979 election.
There have been 28 secretaries in the past 45 years – an average of 1.6 years per incumbent.
In addition, former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott is the only person to have the transport brief for a whole election cycle, in the super-department created in 1997, as Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, before it was broken up in 2001 after the election that year.
Image courtesy of DENZ
