Tulip Siddiq Appointed as UK City Minister With Responsibity for Financial Services, Crypto

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer named Tulip Siddiq as Economic Secretary to the Treasury and City Minister, a position that involves overseeing financial services including crypto.

Siddiq, who held the Shadow City Minister post while in opposition, was appointed after the Labour party’s landslide election victory last week. The party said recently it will support the Bank of England’s digital-pound plans and wants to make the country a tokenization hub.

In a New Statesman article two years ago, the 41-year-old wrote about both the threats and potential she saw in the crypto and blockchain industry.

“Properly regulated crypto assets have the potential to transform our economy and the financial services sector,” Siddiq, who represents London’s Hampstead and Highgate constituency, said in the article. “Many innovative companies are embracing different forms of blockchain technology to improve transparency in finance and to create high-skilled, high-productivity jobs across the UK.”

She has also spoken about crypto fraud in parliamentary debates, and urged for more to be done to mitigate this. The Conservative Party’s City Minister at the time, Andrew Griffith, said measures were being put in place to help tackle fraud via the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act in response, which passed into law last year. That legislation was promoted by the Home Office, which will now be headed by Yvette Cooper.

While in government, the Conservative Party said it wanted the country to be a crypto hub. Last year, it passed legislation for crypto to be treated as a regulated activity and held consultations on a phased approach for regulating crypto that started with stablecoins.

Siddiq’s predecessor, Bim Afolami, promised to usher in secondary legislation for stablecoins and staking but did not manage to do so before the election. Members of the crypto community told CoinDesk they expect the Labour government to push ahead with these plans.

Read more: Ahead of the U.K. Election, Major Parties Remain Silent on Crypto Issues