Caroline Dinenage

Caroline Dinenage is the Conservative MP for Gosport and Minister of State for Digital and Culture. Born in Portsmouth in 1971, Dinenage was raised in the area before studying Politics and English at Swansea University. She first entered politics in 1998 as a councillor in Winchester, having previously spent more than twenty years running her own manufacturing company, Dinenages Ltd. She was first elected to the House of Commons in 2010 and before joining the government sat on the Science and Technology Committee and the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee. In government, she has been parliamentary private secretary to Nicky Morgan, the then Minister for Women and Equalities, and parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Education and the Department for Work and Pensions. Her core political interests include small business, infrastructure, defence and education. In 2012, she successfully campaigned for a medal to be created to honour the veterans of World War II Arctic Convoys and regularly speaks in parliament about issues regarding the welfare of servicemen and women such as PTSD. Dinenage helped to found and is co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Maths and Numeracy. She took up her current role as minister of state at the Department of Health and Social Care in 2018 before taking on her new position during Boris Johnson’s premiership. Since the outbreak of the coronavirus outbreak, Dinenage has worked closely with social media companies – Facebook and Twitter – Google and Cambridge University to tackle misinformation about the virus and the spread of conspiracy theories. She launched the Young Leading Light Award to honour ‘the amazing actions’ of younger residents during the pandemic. She is married to fellow Conservative MP Mark Lancaster. As of the 2019 general election, her majority stands at 23,278.