Baroness Tina Stowell

Tina has been a member of the House of Lords since January 2011. She was appointed to the Government Front Bench in September 2011 and is currently the Minister for the Department for Communities and Local Government in the House of Lords. She was previously the Conservative Deputy Chief Whip and the lead Government spokesman for Women & Equalities and was responsible for taking the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill through the House of Lords during 2013. She was born and brought up in Beeston just outside of Nottingham and attended the local comprehensive and FE college. She left home at 18 to join the civil service in London as a secretary and in 10 years progressed from Whitehall to Washington DC and finally the 10 Downing Street Press Office where she worked for five years during John Major’s time as Prime Minister. After the Civil Service she worked with Sir David Frost at his independent film & TV production company and also did a short stint at Granada Media before returning to politics to run William Hague’s office when he became leader of the Conservative Party. After the Tories’ 2001 General Election defeat she got a job at the BBC and stayed there throughout a turbulent decade at the Corporation: she was the Head of Communications for successive BBC Chairmen before becoming the BBC’s Head of Corporate Affairs. She left the BBC in September 2010 and – before joining the Government front bench in September 2011 – was a freelance strategic communications consultant.