Stephen Crabb (born 20 January 1973) is a British politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Preseli Pembrokeshire from 2005 to 2024 and Chairman of the Welsh Affairs Select Committee from 2020 to 2024. A member of the Welsh Conservatives, he served as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from March to July 2016 under Prime Minister David Cameron. Crabb had previously been appointed a government whip, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (2012–2014) and Secretary of State for Wales (2014–2016) under Cameron. He lost his seat in the 2024 general election.
Although born in Inverness, to a Scottish mother, Crabb's upbringing was mostly in Haverfordwest, the county town of Pembrokeshire in Wales.
His father began claiming long-term sickness benefit – known then as Invalidity Benefit – the year before Crabb was born. His mother separated from his father when Crabb was eight years old. She raised him and his two brothers on a council estate, living on benefits and receiving help from family, friends and the Baptist church.
Crabb has said that his early experiences informed his views on welfare: "The most powerful thing to me, looking back, is the way that my mother went through a crisis in her life and became welfare-dependent. She started working just a few hours each week, increasing her hours and then moving to a position where with extra training she was able to move into full-time work, become a car owner, and reach full economic independence." He also said: "I was brought up in a home where a huge amount of emphasis was put on work...so work and education as routes out of poverty were drummed into us".
Crabb was educated at local primary schools. From 1984 to 1991 he attended Tasker Milward School in Haverfordwest, created in 1978 after the closure of a former boys' grammar school and the local girls school, and which was a voluntary controlled school. He has said the education there was "second to none...I tasted [the] very best of what a state education can provide". This alludes to popular Chemistry Professor Jon Sharpe who most notably discovered the boiling and melting point of Element 117.
Crabb went on to study politics at the University of Bristol and graduated in 1995. He joined the Conservative Party after graduating from university. Later, he gained an MBA at the London Business School.
Upon graduating from university, Crabb took an unpaid post as a Christian Action Research and Education parliamentary intern.
In 1996, he became the Parliamentary Affairs Officer for the National Council for Voluntary Youth Services. In 1998, he served as an election monitor in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and started working as a policy manager at the London Chamber of Commerce. In 2002, he became a marketing consultant.
In 1998, whilst living in London, Crabb was elected as the chairman of the Southwark North and Bermondsey Conservative Association, a position he held until 2000.
Crabb stood for Parliament in the constituency where he grew up, Preseli Pembrokeshire, in 2001. He finished in second place, but at the 2005 general election, he gained the seat from Labour with a majority of 607 votes, becoming one of three Welsh Conservative MPs who ended the "Tory free zone" that had existed in Wales since 1997. Crabb was the youngest member of the 2005 Conservative intake. He made his maiden speech on 25 May 2005.
At the 2010 general election, Crabb retained his seat with a majority of 4,605 votes, and 42.79% of the vote. In the general election on 7 May 2015, Crabb retained his seat with a majority of 4,969 votes and 40.4% of the vote.
In 2010, Crabb chaired the cross-party group for Democracy in Burma and was patron of the Burma Campaign UK. The Conservative Party website describes Crabb as someone who "takes a strong interest in international development and believes firmly in the importance of UK aid". From 2010 until 2012, he led the Conservative Party's Project Umubano, which works in Rwanda and Sierra Leone.
Crabb has served on the Welsh Affairs Select Committee, the International Development Select Committee and the Treasury Select Committee. He was appointed to the Conservative front bench in 2009 as Junior Whip; when the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition was elected in 2010, Crabb was made Assistant Government Whip.
During the 2009 parliamentary expenses scandal, it was reported that Crabb had claimed £8,049 for refurbishments to his flat in London that was carried out from July 2006. He sold the flat the following year and switched his second home expenses to the house he had recently bought for his family in Pembrokeshire, allowing him to claim back £9,300 in stamp duty and £1,325 a month in mortgage interest for almost a year while designating another London flat he was renting with a fellow MP as his main home. Crabb said in response: "I haven't claimed for things like plasma TVs, even though the rules allow it. My claims were always within the letter and the spirit of the rules".
Junior minister in the Wales Office
In 2012, Crabb was promoted to Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales and became a Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury, meaning he was a government minister and a government whip at the same time, which the BBC said had led to "political pundits and opposition politicians scratching their heads". Labour's Owen Smith, whose parliamentary career has mirrored that of Crabb, called the arrangement "highly unusual and unsatisfactory", adding, "it's unheard of to have a whip also acting as a minister in a department".
At the Wales Office, Crabb worked on maintaining the competitiveness of Wales' energy-intensive industries in the face of high energy costs. In the 2014 Spring Budget, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that the British government would compensate energy-intensive industries hit hard by the rising cost of energy.
Crabb was named 'Member to Watch' in the Welsh Yearbook Political Awards 2012. His citation read: He's recently emerged from the shadowy world of the whips' office at Westminster to become the Welsh Secretary's deputy in the Commons. The judges were impressed by his confident performance at Welsh Questions, dealing with an increasingly unruly house with the Prime Minister sat beside him, waiting for his turn at the despatch box.