Tina Stowell

The Rt Hon Baroness Stowell of Beeston MBE

Baroness Stowell chairs the Communications and Digital Select Committee in the House of Lords.  She is also a Social Mobility Commissioner.  

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

Tina Stowell was made a Conservative peer by David Cameron in January 2011 and joined the Government later the same year. Whilst a junior minister she was involved in several pieces of legislation and, most notably, led the landmark Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act through the House of Lords in 2013.  Not only did the Equal Marriage legislation succeed in the second chamber against expectations,  the margin of peers voting in favour was higher than that of MPs in the Commons.  She received awards from the Spectator, Stonewall and PinkNews later that year.

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.  

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 away from the world of government and politics from 1996 to 1998 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.

Before she joined the Government as a minister in 2011 she 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 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.