Shriti Vadera, Baroness Vadera

Vorlage:Infobox Politician Shriti Vadera, Baroness Vadera, PC (born in 1962) is a British investment banker and politician. She is currently a government minister jointly for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Cabinet Office.

Early life

She was born in Uganda in 1962Vorlage:Fact into a family of Indian origin and of the Lohana tribe of the Kshatriya caste.Vorlage:Fact Her family owned a small tea plantation but fled to India in 1972 following the Ugandan government's expulsion of Ugandan Asians, and then later to the UK. Vadera was educated at Northwood College before achieving a second-class degree in philosophy and economics at Somerville College, Oxford.

Private sector career

For over 14 years Vadera was employed at investment bank UBS Warburg, where her work included advising governments of developing countries, and debt relief and restructuring. She also played a role in the partial privatisation of South African Telecom.

Government advisor and minister

From April 1999 she was an adviser to Gordon Brown during his time as Chancellor of the Exchequer. She was involved in the sale of the government defence technology company QinetiQ, the partial sale of the London Underground, and placing national rail network back into public ownership.

Following his appointment as Prime Minister in June 2007, Brown appointed her as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for International Development. As she was not a member of either of the Houses of Parliament, she was created a life peer on 11 July 2007 as Baroness Vadera, of Holland Park in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The Sunday Times reported that the Cabinet Secretary "flatly refus[ed] to allow her to cross the threshold of No 10 as policy enforcer" and "no Permanent Secretary could stand her" - although the Cabinet Secretary denied making these comments. After six months in International Development, she was moved to the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (now the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills). In October 2008, she also became a Parliamentary Secretary in the Cabinet Office.

On 14 January 2009, shortly before the UK officially went into a recession, she was interviewed by Alastair Stewart on the ITV Lunchtime News. After being asked when "green shoots of recovery" would appear, Vadera replied:

"Well, it's a very uncertain world right now globally but I wouldn't want to be the one predicting it. I am seeing a few green shoots but it's a little bit too early to say exactly how they'll grow."

Her response generated commentary from a number of sources, including shadow chancellor George Osborne and former chancellor Norman Lamont, who first used the phrase "green shoots" in 1991. Lamont said: "It is extremely premature to use a phrase like that."