Victoria Atkins was born on 22 March 1976 in London, the daughter of Sir Robert Atkins, a former Conservative MP and MEP, and Lady (Dulcie) Atkins, a Conservative councillor and mayor. She was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at the age of three and was privately educated at Arnold School, a co-educational school in Blackpool, and studied law at the University of Cambridge where she was an undergraduate student at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Atkins was called to the bar (Middle Temple) in 1998. She worked as a barrister in the field of fraud in London.
Since leaving Arnold School in Blackpool (the background image), she has been a politician who served in various ministerial positions under Prime Ministers Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak between 2017 and 2024, lastly as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care from November 2023 to July 2024. A member of the Conservative Party, she has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Louth and Horncastle since 2015 and Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care from July to November 2024. Before her political career, she worked as a barrister specialising in organised crime. Atkins was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding at the Home Office in November 2017 by Prime Minister Theresa May. Following the formation of the first Johnson ministry in July 2019, she remained in her post. On 16 September 2021, during the cabinet reshuffle, Boris Johnson appointed Atkins Minister of State for Prisons and Probation and Minister for Afghan Resettlement; she oversaw Operation Pitting in the latter role until she was replaced in March 2022. She resigned as Prisons Minister during the July 2022 government crisis, and called on Johnson to resign. After Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister in October 2022, she was appointed Financial Secretary to the Treasury before being promoted to Health Secretary in the November 2023 cabinet reshuffle.

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