Tina Stowell

The Rt Hon Baroness Stowell of Beeston MBE

Baroness Stowell is a Conservative Peer in the House of Lords. She is also a Social Mobility Commissioner.   

She is a former Chair of the Communications and Digital Select Committee, and a former Cabinet Minister as Leader of the House of Lords and The Lord Privy Seal.  She was Chair of the Charity Commission from 2018 to 2021.  

She has received the Spectator Magazine’s “Peer of the Year” award twice: in 2013 for her stewardship of the Equal Marriage legislation through the House of Lords; and in 2024 for successfully leading a campaign in Parliament to prevent foreign governments, states or ‘foreign powers’ from owning, controlling or influencing British newspapers.  

Tina Stowell was appointed to the House of Lords by David Cameron in January 2011 and joined the Coalition Government later the same year. Whilst a junior minister she was involved in several pieces of legislation and, most notably, successfully led the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act through the House of Lords against all expectations at the time.    

David Cameron promoted her to the Cabinet as Leader of the House of Lords and the Lord Privy Seal in July 2014 and re-apppointed her to the same post when the Conservatives returned to power after the 2015 General Election.  She was not retained by Mrs May and left the Government for the backbenches in July 2016.  

In recent years her work in the House of Lords has focused primarily on policy and legislation associated with the media and tech sectors.  During her chairmanship, the Communications and Digital Select Committee’s extensive formal Inquiries included Large Language Models; Scaling-Up AI and Creative-Tech; the Future of News; the Future of the Creative Industries; SLAPPs (lawfare that threatens free speech); and Digital Markets.  

Before joining the House of Lords Tina Stowell’s career over the previous 25 years criss-crossed government, politics and the media.

Until September 2010, she was the BBC’s Head of Corporate Affairs. Throughout her nine years at the BBC she worked at the heart of the organisation and was as an adviser to three BBC chairmen (Gavyn Davies, Michael Grade and Michael Lyons).

Before joining the BBC in November 2001 she ran William Hague’s office when he was Leader of the Conservative Party.

Before that, she spent two years in the private sector working in a range of places, including a short spell at Granada Media and working for Sir David Frost at Paradine, his own independent television and film production company.

She was a civil servant for ten years, working at the Ministry of Defence in London, the British Embassy in Washington and the 10 Downing Street Press Office from 1991 to 1996 when John Major was Prime Minister. She left the Civil Service at the age of 28 and was awarded the MBE in the 1996 Queen’s Birthday Honour’s List.

Tina Stowell was born and brought up in Beeston, just outside of Nottingham.  She attended a local comprehensive and moved to London aged 18 to join the civil service as a secretary.  She talked briefly about her family and route from Beeston to the House of Lords in her maiden speech and how her experiences motivate her own priorities.  In December 2016 she received an Honorary Doctorate from Nottingham University.  In recent years she has served on several boards as a non-executive director, including ABTA (the travel trade body) and Impellam plc (the recruitment and managed services business). 

Before she joined the Government as a minister in 2011 Tina was an occasional blogger. All her posts are still available on this site, as well as some newer posts and some articles she has written for other publications. She takes a particular interest in the social divides that were starkly exposed by the Brexit referendum in the UK and the first election of Donald Trump in the US and which have remained present in all democratic events since – especially the electoral division between graduates and non-graduates.  She wrote a paper for the Social Market Foundation about the topic in 2021 which you can read in full here. And she produced an associated podcast series, ‘Tina talks to… Today’s Britons’ – which you can find ‘wherever you get your podcasts’ or here. 

You can find all of Tina Stowell’s spoken contributions to debates in the House of Lords on a range of matters here, and information about the offices she has held in the House of Lords and her entry in the Register of Interests is available here.

LinkedIn 

X @tinastowell