Very few readers of this magazine will have heard of the government minister Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth. A former leader of the Conservatives in the Welsh Assembly, Lord Bourne has been a member of the Upper House since 2013. He is currently a junior minister in the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG). As such he oversees community cohesion, race equality, troubled families, domestic refuges, travellers policy, as well as being in charge of the Syrian Refugees Programme.
On top of that, he works in the Wales Office where is also junior minister with responsibilities for energy, environment, defence, local government, localism, education and law and order in Wales. As part of his job is the DCLG, he is responsible for “faith and integration”; in other words, Lord Bourne has inherited the portfolio once entrusted to Lady Warsi, who was Minister for Faith between September 2012 and August 2014. However, as a senior government figure in the Foreign Office she attended Cabinet meetings. Lord Bourne does not.
