Liz Truss has appointed Therese Coffey deputy prime minister and health secretary during a major reshuffle of the government.

The new prime minister appointed Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor as she also made James Cleverly the foreign secretary.

Former attorney general Suella Braverman was appointed home secretary, replacing Priti Patel after she pre-emptively resigned.

The appointments mean that for the first time in history none of the great offices of state are held by white men.

Truss began her cabinet reshuffle with a cull of prominent Rishi Sunak supporters, sending Dominic Raab, Grant Shapps and Steve Barclay to the backbenches swiftly after she became prime minister.

She removed the senior figures who had backed her rival in the Tory leadership race promptly after heading to her House of Commons office following her first speech in Downing Street on Tuesday.

Coffey, the former work and pensions secretary who is regarded as Truss’s closest friend in Westminster, replaced Raab as the second in command after he described Truss’s tax plans as an “electoral suicide note”.

Coffey has spelled out her top four priorities. She told Sky News: “I’m just about to enter the department and go to meet our great civil servants I’m going to work with.

“We’ve got priorities A, B, C, D – ambulances, backlogs, care, D – doctors and dentists. And we’re going to work through that and we’ll make sure that we’re delivering for the patients”.

Asked whether she is ready for strikes, Coffey said: “I think we’ve got to be ready for patients and that’s my top priority, and how we can make best use of our department and of course the NHS in order to achieve the best outcomes for them.”

Asked what her message is to potentially demoralised NHS staff, Coffey she recognised “they’ve done excellent work” and repeated her priorities.

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