Sajid Javid is standing down as an MP. He won't be missed.

Sajid Javid has announced he will be standing down as an MP at the next election. An MP since 2010, Javid has held numerous senior positions in government. He succeeded Matt Hancock as health secretary during the pandemic, and has also been culture secretary, business secretary, home secretary and chancellor of the exchequer.

In over a decade in parliament and across many years as a minister, Javid has had a major impact on the country. Much of it has been hugely damaging.

Here’s Sajid Javid’s 10 worst moments as a Tory MP.

1. Defending ties to Saudi Arabia

The UK has long had close economic ties to Saudi Arabia. The government has been heavily criticised for this relationship, given the gulf state’s appalling human rights record and devastating military intervention in Yemen.

In 2021, when Sajid Javid was health secretary, he defended the UK’s economic links to Saudi Arabia in an interview on LBC. In the interview, Javid said, “We don’t agree with their approach on human rights, we’re always right to call that out and to talk to them frankly about that, at the same time, it is also possible to have an economic relationship, whether people like it or not Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest producer of crude oil.”

Javid’s comments came after Saudi Arabia executed 81 people in a single day – the largest mass execution in the country for decades.

2. Ignoring warnings over weapons exports to Saudi Arabia

Sajid Javid’s dodgy decisions on Saudi Arabia don’t stop at comments in interviews. When he was business secretary, he refused to stop weapons being exported to the country, despite widespread concern that these arms could be used to kill civilians in Yemen.

Not only did he ignore the concerns of the public, he also ignored the warnings of senior civil servants. Edward Bell, head of the Export Control Organisation, wrote about the decision: “To be honest, and I was very direct and honest with the secretary of state, my gut tells me we should suspend [weapons exports].”

3. Dismissing the suffering of 164 Windrush migrants

Sajid Javid took over from Amber Rudd as home secretary in the wake of the Windrush scandal. In 2018, Javid issued an official apology for the scandal, following a review of 11,800 reported cases of people being deported, detained or threatened with deportation.

While the government’s report said 18 people were “most likely to have suffered detriment because their right to be in the UK was not recognised”, Javid dismissed the plight of a further 164 cases of people who had been detained or removed from the country, despite having indications they had been in the UK since before 1973.

Of these cases, Javid said, “It is clear from our internal analysis of these that features of individual cases are markedly different. The way in which each individual was treated by the department, and the degree of detriment suffered, varied considerably.”

4. Becoming an adviser to JP Morgan while still an MP

Mere months after standing down as chancellor of the exchequer in 2020, Sajid Javid had found another lucrative job. He took a job as an adviser to the multinational investment bank JPMorgan. The role reportedly secured Javid £150,000 a year.

The move received widespread condemnation, given the nature of the role and Javid’s background in ministerial office. It led to calls for second jobs for MPs to be banned.

5. Pocketing £150k for 10-12 days work with a US tech firm

JPMorgan wasn’t Sajid Javid’s only side hustle following his stint as chancellor. He was paid £150,000 a year by C3.ai, a US tech firm that specialises in artificial intelligence.

According to reports, that gig only required him to work just 10-12 days a year – the equivalent of £1,900 per hour.

6. Advocating outsourcing of public services

Sajid Javid has been an advocate for outsourcing in public services. In 2012, Javid was a junior minister, and spoke in the House of Commons to argue that outsourcing is an “excellent” way for the government to “receive the best possible value in return” on taxpayer’s money. He went on to advocate “increasing the amount of services that we commission out” in order to “drive quality through competition”.

7. Saying he wanted to deter Channel crossings by making it harder to gain asylum

Suella Braverman may have taken over the mantle as migrant-basher in chief, but she is merely the latest in a long line of Tory ministers who have made a string of unpleasant comments regarding refugees and asylum seekers. When he was home secretary, Sajid Javid was among them.

In 2019, Javid said in relation to small boat Channel crossings: “If you do somehow make it to the UK, we will do everything we can to make sure that you are often not successful because we need to break that link, and to break that link means we can save more lives”.

These comments were slammed by refugee rights groups and experts in migration law, with the Refugee Council saying that the suggestion of denying asylum was unlawful.

8. Presiding over the NHS ‘corporate takeover bill’

As health secretary, Sajid Javid was responsible for overseeing the final stages of the parliamentary process of the Health and Care Act.

The Act was branded a ‘charter for corruption’ and a ‘corporate takeover bill’ by campaigners as a result of it allowing representatives of private companies to sit on NHS decision making bodies.

9. Introducing the 2016 Trade Union Act

The UK is known for having the most draconian anti-union laws in Europe. One of the biggest contributors to this is the 2016 Trade Union Act. That’s the legislation that requires trade unions to meet arbitrary turnout thresholds – thresholds which are not in place for elections to the House of Commons.

Who was the minister to introduce this legislation? Sajid Javid when he was business secretary.

10. Defending excluding transgender people from the ban on conversion therapy

The UK government in 2022 confirmed it planned to outlaw conversion therapy – a pseudoscientific practice of attempting to change an individual’s sexuality or gender. However, the government was widely condemned for only committing to outlaw the practice on the grounds of sexuality, allowing trans conversion therapy to persist.

Sajid Javid was among the government ministers to defend this position, arguing for a more “sensitive approach” with regards to trans people. Given that a UN expert has found that conversion therapy can amount to torture, it’s unclear how this could be remotely deemed as ‘sensitive’.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

Image credit: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street – Creative Commons

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