Introducing St Antony’s Visiting Parliamentary Fellows for 2023-24

We are delighted to announce that the Right Honourable Chris Skidmore OBE and Alex Sobel MP will be joining St Antony’s as Visiting Parliamentary Fellows this academic year. Chris Skidmore and Alex Sobel will be convening a series of public seminars during Hilary and Trinity Term focussing on the ongoing debates around the UK’s climate objectives, drawing on their expertise and work on this subject.

The VPF Seminar Series was launched at COP28 last week.

Chris Skidmore was Minister of State jointly at the Department for Education and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy from September 2019 to February 2020, where he signed the UK’s Net Zero targets into legislation.

He is Chair of the Independent Government Review on Net Zero, “Mission Zero”, which was published in January 2023, and urged the UK to seize a historic opportunity afforded by the transition to Net Zero.

Prior to this, he was Minister of State at the Department of Health and Social Care in 2019, Minister of State jointly at the Department for Education and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy from December 2018 to July 2019, and Parliamentary Secretary at the Cabinet Office from July 2016 to January 2018.

He was elected Conservative MP for Kingswood in May 2010.

Alex Sobel served as Shadow Minister of Nature Recovery and the Domestic Environment. In 2020 he was appointed as the shadow minister for Tourism and Heritage and was responsible for developing Labour’s domestic tourism policies.

In 2019 he set up the Net Zero All-Party Parliamentary Group to help secure a low-carbon and clean industrial and economic future for the UK, embed zero-carbon solutions, and accelerate net zero growth, innovation, and global influence.

His background is in the social enterprise sector which is reflected in his work as Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Social Enterprise.

He was elected Labour MP for Leeds North West in June 2017.

Thomas Hale, Professor of Global Public Policy at Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government and Fellow of St Antony’s College, will be coordinating the seminar series. Thomas co-leads the Net Zero Tracker.

Dates will be announced soon for this year’s seminars on the topic of Climate and Sustainability.

Images of Chris Skidmore and Alex Sobel – Official portrait photographs from the UK Parliament website, released for sharing under an Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) licence, and adapted for our use.