Rt Hon James Purnell MP
Secretary of State for Department of Work and Pensions
James Purnell was appointed Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in January 2008 following the resignation of Peter Hain.
He was previously Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, a position he took in June 2007, as part of Gordon Brown's first Cabinet. Prior to this, he was Minister of State for Pensions Reform at the Department of Work and Pensions.
Previously, he had been Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport since May 2005, and, before this, Parliamentary Private Secretary to Ruth Kelly MP in the Cabinet Office. He joined the Government as Assistant Whip in December 2004.
Before entering Parliament in 2001, he was Head of Corporate Planning at the BBC (1995-1997) and then worked as a special adviser on culture, media, sport and the knowledge economy for the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, from 1997 to 2001.
He was born in 1970 in London and went to university at Balliol College, Oxford.
