including by Elliot himself and by the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, but unexpectedly Elliot was appointed to replace Gilmour as Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food while Godfrey Collins became the Scottish Secretary after the departure of Sir Archibald Sinclair, 4th Baronet. He was seen by many as a rising star. In 1932 he entered the Cabinet as Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and subsequently served as Secretary of State for Scotland and Minister of Health. Amongst his achievements were the Agricultural Marketing Act which sought to protect food producers from going bankrupt amidst massive surpluses and collapsing prices, the introduction of free milk for school children and formation of the National Housing Company which built prefabricated steel-based "Weir Houses" (produced for industrialist William Weir, 1st Viscount Weir) in Clydeside. While Minister of Agriculture, Elliot asked John Boyd Orr, who advocated a national food policy, to prepare a report on nutrition and public health, though it went unpublished because of their political ramifications. Orr published the report himself as Food, Health and Income in early 1936, advocating national and international co-ordination on nutrition. He was elected Rector of the University of Aberdeen in 1933, serving until 1936. Elliot was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1935. On 29 March 1939, Elliot passed the Cancer Act 1939 - "An Act to make further provision for the treatment of cancer, to authorise the Minister of Health to lend money to the National Radium Trust, to prohibit certain advertisements relating to cancer, and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid". All provisions in the Act for improving the treatment of cancer nationally have since been stripped, leaving only the prohibition against advertisements relating to cancer treatments. In 1938 Elliot's career reached a turning point when he came close to resigning over the Munich Agreement but decided against. Consequently, his political stock began to fall and when Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister in 1940, Elliot was dropped from the government. He later served as Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Second World War Churchill did not include Elliot in the Churchill war ministry during the Second World War; instead, Churchill offered him the post of Governor of British Burma (the "Scottish Colony") in October 1940, which Elliot refused. Since leaving government, Elliot become deputy assistant adjutant-general