New U.K. Health Chief Is Ex-Deutsche Man Keen to End Virus Rules

(Bloomberg) -- Sajid Javid’s return to Boris Johnson’s top team as health secretary seals a speedy comeback for one of the political heavyweights of the Conservative Party, a one-time managing director at Deutsche Bank AG who is expected to push for a timely end to Britain’s coronavirus restrictions.

Replacing Matt Hancock following his dramatic resignation over the weekend, Javid is more likely to support easing coronavirus rules than his predecessor, according to former Javid aide Salma Shah, speaking on BBC TV on Sunday.

“His view could be defined as a lot more liberal when it comes to Covid restrictions,” Shah said. “Immediately we’ll see that.”

In Javid’s first comments as health secretary, he said he wanted to see the country return to normal “as soon and as quickly as possible”.

“We have made enormous progress in the battle against this dreadful disease,” he said in an e-mailed statement. “I want our country to get out of this pandemic and that will be my most immediate priority.”

A second-generation immigrant and son of a bus driver, Javid steadily rose through the Tory ranks following his election to Parliament in 2010 after a successful banking career, becoming Britain’s first ethnic-minority chief of the Treasury in 2019.

Downing Street Bust-Up

However, his tenure as Chancellor was short-lived and he never delivered a budget, quitting in February 2020 after a face-to-face argument with the prime minister in 10 Downing Street. Johnson had demanded Javid fire his most senior aides and set up a joint unit with his office. Javid refused to do so and quit.

A former employee of Chase Manhattan Bank, Javid, 51, ran against Johnson for the leadership of the Conservative Party in 2019. The health portfolio is his sixth different role as a secretary of state, having previously run the culture, home, business, communities and Treasury departments.

At Deutsche, he ran the German bank’s trading operations in Asia before entering Parliament.

Javid takes charge of Britain’s pandemic response at a critical moment, with cases surging and the country’s vaccination program still in full swing.

His immediate tasks include managing a significant back-log of operations in the National Health Service, planning a campaign of booster vaccinations against the coronavirus in the winter and devising proposals to fix Britain’s social care system.

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