Alok Sharma, MP for Reading West, has been appointed as the new housing and planning minister.
After Gavin Barwell lost his seat in the recent general election, Sharma has been appointed to Minister of State for the Department for Communities and Local Government.
A qualified accountant, Sharma entered parliament in 2010 as an MP for Reading West and was previously minister for Asia and the Pacific at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as well as serving as a member of the Treasury Select Committee.
In the past, Mr Sharma has campaigned to secure infrastructure investment for his constituency, including the extension of Crossrail services to Reading from the project’s original western terminus of Maidenhead.
