After Gavin Barwell lost his seat in last week’s general election, Sharma was yesterday appointed to Minister of State for the Department for Communities and Local Government.
A qualified accountant, Sharma entered parliament in 2010 as an MP for Reading West and was previously minister for Asia and the Pacific at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as well as serving as a member of the Treasury Select Committee.
In the past, Mr Sharma has campaigned to secure infrastructure investment for his constituency, including the extension of Crossrail services to Reading from the project’s original western terminus of Maidenhead.
He has also fought controversial local housing proposals, including plans for 750 new homes on a greenfield site known as Pincents Hill, a scheme rejected by then-communities secretary Eric Pickles in 2011. In 2010, Sharma gave his backing to residents campaigning against proposals to build 96 homes at Thames Water’s Bath Road Reservoir site.
Barwell lost his marginal Croydon Central seat to Labour candidate Sarah Jones in last week's Election and has since been appointed as Theresa May's chief of staff after Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill resigned.
