Last updated: 08 November 2008
Liam Byrne is Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
He is responsible for helping to coordinate work across government, and leads the government's efforts to tackle social exclusion, support the third sector and coordinate the improvement of public services.
Liam Byrne MP was previously a Home Office Minister of State for Borders and Immigration, and Minister for the West Midlands. Before that he spent a year as Under-Secretary of State for Care Services at the Department of Health.
Liam joined the Labour Party when he was 15 and was elected to the seat of Birmingham Hodge Hill in the by-election in July 2004. He lives in Birmingham with his wife Sarah and three children.
Liam was educated at Manchester University where he graduated with first class honours and was elected leader of the Student's Union, and Harvard Business School where he was a Fulbright Scholar. He advised the Labour Party on general election organisation between 1996-7 before managing Labour's national business campaign.
Liam began his career at Andersen Consulting and worked for NM Rothschilds before starting a venture-backed technology company in 2000. Liam is the author of Local Government Transformed (1996); Information Age Government (1998); New Strategies for Full Employment (2001); and Britain in 2020 (forethought, 2003). He was also co-editor of Reinventing Government Again (2004).
Liam is a member of Amicus, the Christian Socialist Movement, the Fabian Society and was formerly an Associate Fellow of the Social Market Foundation.