Dominic Raab, the former City lawyer who coined the idea of a British bill of rights, has been appointed a parliamentary under secretary of state at the Ministry of Justice, David Cameron confirmed this lunchtime. 

Raab, admitted in 2000, was an international lawyer at magic circle firm Linklaters, where he worked on project finance, international litigation and competition law.

He also spent time on secondments at human rights organisation Liberty and in Brussels advising on EU and world trade law.

In 2000, Raab joined the Foreign & Commonwealth Office where he advised on briefs including UK investor protection and the international law of outer space.

In 2003 he was posted to The Hague to head up a new team focused on bringing war criminals to justice. On his return to London, he advised on the Arab-Israeli conflict, EU law and Gibraltar. 

Raab left the Foreign & Commonwealth Office in 2006, and spend the next three years as chief of staff to respective shadow home and justice secretaries, advising on crime, policing, immigration, counter-terrorism, human rights and constitutional reform. He was elected to parliament for Esher and Walton in 2010.

In his 2009 book The Assault on Liberty – What Went Wrong with Rights, Raab attacked the Labour government's record on civil liberties, including what he called 'the phenomenon of ever-expanding rights'.

He proposed replacing the Human Rights Act with
 a bill of rights, ‘based on the core rights in the European Convention, but halting the conveyor belt of new rights’.

Such a measure ‘would enable us to stay within the convention – but mitigate our exposure to erratic case law from Strasbourg, and avoid importing wholesale the continental model of human right’. 

Since 2010 Raab has sat on the joint committee on human rights.

In another addition to the ministerial team, the prime minister announced the appointment of Gosport MP Caroline Dinenage as parliamentary under secretary of state at the MoJ and minister for equalities at the Department for Education. 

Solicitor Shailesh Vara remains in post as parliamentary under secretary of state following his re-election at North West Cambridgeshire, as does Andrew Selous, MP for South West Bedfordshire.