Sir John Flasby Lawrance Whittingdale (born 16 October 1959) is a British politician serving as
Member of Parliament
A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members o ...
(MP) for
Maldon
Maldon (, locally ) is a town and civil parish on the Blackwater estuary in Essex, England. It is the seat of the Maldon District and starting point of the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation. It is known for Maldon Sea Salt which is produced ...
(and its predecessors) since 1992. A member of the
Conservative Party
The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right.
Political parties called The Conservative P ...
, Whittingdale served as the
Minister of State for Media and Data at the
Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) from 2020 to 2021, having previously served at the DCMS as
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in the
Cabinet
Cabinet or The Cabinet may refer to:
Furniture
* Cabinetry, a box-shaped piece of furniture with doors and/or drawers
* Display cabinet, a piece of furniture with one or more transparent glass sheets or transparent polycarbonate sheets
* Filin ...
from 2015 to 2016.
Whittingdale has been an MP since the
1992 general election, for a series of constituencies centred on the town of
Maldon
Maldon (, locally ) is a town and civil parish on the Blackwater estuary in Essex, England. It is the seat of the Maldon District and starting point of the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation. It is known for Maldon Sea Salt which is produced ...
,
Essex
Essex () is a Ceremonial counties of England, county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the Riv ...
. He was Vice-Chairman of the
1922 Committee. He was a member of the Executive of
Conservative Way Forward
Conservative Way Forward (CWF) is a British pressure and campaigning group, which is Thatcherite in its outlook and agenda. Margaret Thatcher was its founding President.
Conservative Way Forward was founded in 1991 to "defend and build upon t ...
(2005–2010) and the
Conservative Party Board (2006–2010).
Whittingdale served as Chairman of the
Culture, Media and Sport Committee
The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, formerly the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, is one of the select committees of the British House of Commons, established in 1997. It oversees the operations of the Department fo ...
from 2005 to 2015. He was appointed Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport by Prime Minister
David Cameron
David William Donald Cameron (born 9 October 1966) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2005 to 2016. He previously served as Leader o ...
in May 2015. He was one of the six Cabinet ministers to come out in favour of Brexit during the
2016 EU referendum
The United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, commonly referred to as the EU referendum or the Brexit referendum, took place on 23 June 2016 in the United Kingdom (UK) and Gibraltar to ask the electorate whether the country shoul ...
and was afterwards a supporter of the Eurosceptic campaign
Leave Means Leave. He was dismissed by Prime Minister
Theresa May
Theresa Mary May, Lady May (; née Brasier; born 1 October 1956) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2016 to 2019. She previously served in David Cameron's cab ...
in July 2016 during a cabinet reshuffle.
Early life and career
Whittingdale was born on 16 October 1959. He is the only son of John Whittingdale
FRCS (1894-1974) and Margaret Esme Scott (1920-), ''née'' Napier, who had previously married firstly, in 1942 (div. 1946), Capt. Ephraim Stewart Cook Spence, of the
Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders
Argyll (; archaically Argyle, in modern Gaelic, ), sometimes called Argyllshire, is a historic county and registration county of western Scotland.
Argyll is of ancient origin, and corresponds to most of the part of the ancient kingdom of ...
, and secondly, in 1946,
her cousin, Major Alexander Napier (d. 1954), of the Indian Army. Via his mother Whittingdale is in distant
remainder to the
lordship of Napier. Whittingdale was educated at
Sandroyd School and
Winchester College
Winchester College is a public school (fee-charging independent day and boarding school) in Winchester, Hampshire, England. It was founded by William of Wykeham in 1382 and has existed in its present location ever since. It is the oldest of ...
, followed by
University College London
, mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £143 million (2020)
, budget = ...
(UCL) where he was Chairman of UCL Conservative Society. He graduated with a
2:2 in Economics in 1982.
From 1982 to 1984, Whittingdale was head of the political section of the
Conservative Research Department
The Conservative Research Department (CRD) is part of the central organisation of the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom. It operates alongside other departments of Conservative Campaign Headquarters in Westminster.
The CRD has been desc ...
. He then served as
Special Adviser to three successive
Secretaries of State for Trade and Industry,
Norman Tebbit
Norman Beresford Tebbit, Baron Tebbit (born 29 March 1931) is a British politician. A member of the Conservative Party, he served in the Cabinet from 1981 to 1987 as Secretary of State for Employment (1981–1983), Secretary of State for Trad ...
(1984–1985);
Leon Brittan
Leon Brittan, Baron Brittan of Spennithorne, (25 September 193921 January 2015) was a British Conservative politician and barrister who served as a European Commissioner from 1989 to 1999. As a member of Parliament from 1974 to 1988, he serv ...
(1985–1986), and
Paul Channon (1986–1987). He worked on international privatisation at
NM Rothschild
Nathaniel Mayer Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild, Baron de Rothschild (8 November 1840 – 31 March 1915) was a British banker and politician from the wealthy international Rothschild family.
Early life
Nathaniel Mayer Rothschild was the el ...
in 1987 and in January 1988, became
Political Secretary to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the first female British prime ...
. Upon her resignation Whittingdale was appointed
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations,
and public service outside the civil service. It was established ...
and continued to serve as her Political Secretary until being elected to
Parliament
In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government via hearings and inquiries. Th ...
in 1992.
Parliamentary career
Whittingdale entered the
House of Commons in 1992 as the MP for
South Colchester and Maldon. He was appointed
Parliamentary Private Secretary
A Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) is a Member of Parliament (MP) in the United Kingdom who acts as an unpaid assistant to a minister or shadow minister. They are selected from backbench MPs as the 'eyes and ears' of the minister in the ...
to
Eric Forth,
Minister of State for Education and Employment, but resigned, as is customary, after voting against the Government for an
amendment that would have allowed media publishers with more than a 20% share of the national press market to buy an
ITV company.
He was later
Shadow Culture Secretary from 2004 until the reshuffle following the
general election in 2005, at which he was returned as MP for
Maldon and Chelmsford East. In 2005, he was appointed to the Executive of
Conservative Way Forward
Conservative Way Forward (CWF) is a British pressure and campaigning group, which is Thatcherite in its outlook and agenda. Margaret Thatcher was its founding President.
Conservative Way Forward was founded in 1991 to "defend and build upon t ...
, a
Thatcherite pressure group
Advocacy groups, also known as interest groups, special interest groups, lobbying groups or pressure groups use various forms of advocacy in order to influence public opinion and ultimately policy. They play an important role in the develop ...
within the
onservative_Party._He_is_a_council_member_of_The_Freedom_Association_and_of_the_European_Foundation_(think_tank).html" ;"title="The_Freedom_Association.html" ;"title="onservative Party. He is a council member of The Freedom Association">onservative Party. He is a council member of The Freedom Association and of the European Foundation (think tank)">European Foundation. In 2008, he was elected as a parliamentary member to the Board of the Conservative Party and Vice Chairman of the Conservative Parliamentary
1922 Committee. In 2011, he was Chairman of the Football Governance Inquiry.
In 2012, he was Chairman of the Joint Committee of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, Joint Parliamentary Committee on Privacy and Injunctions. he was Vice Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Intellectual Property Group.
Whittingdale was among the 175 MPs who voted against the
Same-sex Marriage Bill in 2013.
In 2014, Whittingdale along with six other Conservative MPs voted against the
Equal Pay (Transparency) Bill which would require all companies with more than 250 employees to declare the gap in pay between the average male and average female salaries.
He was in favour of
Brexit
Brexit (; a portmanteau of "British exit") was the Withdrawal from the European Union, withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) at 23:00 Greenwich Mean Time, GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February 2020 Central Eur ...
during the
2016 EU membership referendum.
Following the referendum, which resulted in a narrow majority in favour of Brexit, he was one of several Conservative MPs who signed a letter to PM Theresa May urging that the UK withdraw from both the
European Single Market and the
Customs Union
A customs union is generally defined as a type of trade bloc which is composed of a free trade area with a common external tariff.GATTArticle 24 s. 8 (a)
Customs unions are established through trade pacts where the participant countries set up ...
. After the referendum, Whittingdale was a supporter of the Eurosceptic campaign
Leave Means Leave.
Media Select Committee
On 14 July 2005 he became the chairman of the
Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. In this role he led the committee's 2009/2010 investigation into libel and privacy issues, including the
News International phone hacking scandal after ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...
'' first revealed the extent of the practice at the ''
News of the World
The ''News of the World'' was a weekly national red top tabloid newspaper published every Sunday in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the world's highest-selling English-language newspaper, and at closure still had one ...
''. He was alleged to have warned members of the committee to consider not compelling former ''News of the World'' editor
Rebekah Brooks to testify due to the potential risk that their personal lives would be investigated in revenge, but has strongly denied the accusation.
In April 2011 he called for a public inquiry into phone hacking at the ''News of the World'' and to why a series of investigations by
Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard (officially New Scotland Yard) is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, the territorial police force responsible for policing Greater London's 32 boroughs, but not the City of London, the square mile that forms London's ...
failed to link any
News International
News Corp UK & Ireland Limited (trading as News UK, formerly News International and NI Group) is a British newspaper publisher, and a wholly owned subsidiary of the American mass media conglomerate News Corp. It is the current publisher of ...
employees to phone hacking other than the ''News of the Worlds former royal editor,
Clive Goodman. Whittingdale said: "There are some very big questions; what I find
ostworrying is the apparent unwillingness of the police, who had the evidence and chose to do nothing with it. That's something that needs to be looked into."
With just one out of three of News International's senior executives agreeing to appear before the committee session on 19 July, Whittingdale took the rarely used step of issuing a
summons
A summons (also known in England and Wales as a claim form and in the Australian state of New South Wales as a court attendance notice (CAN)) is a legal document issued by a court (a ''judicial summons'') or by an administrative agency of governme ...
to compel the
Murdochs to attend. Whittingdale said
Select Committees had taken such steps against individuals in the past and they had complied and continued "I hope very much that the Murdochs will respond similarly." They both did, on 19 July, in what one paper described as the most important Select Committee hearing in parliamentary history.
For its successful work on the phone hacking scandal, Whittingdale accepted ''
The Spectator
''The Spectator'' is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world.
It is owned by Frederick Barclay, who also owns ''Th ...
''s 2011 "Inquisitor of the Year" award on behalf of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee.
Culture Secretary
Whittingdale was appointed
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport by Prime Minister
David Cameron
David William Donald Cameron (born 9 October 1966) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2005 to 2016. He previously served as Leader o ...
on 11 May 2015. He was sworn in to the
Privy Council
A privy council is a body that advises the head of state of a state, typically, but not always, in the context of a monarchic government. The word "privy" means "private" or "secret"; thus, a privy council was originally a committee of the mo ...
following his appointment.
In April 2016, Shadow Culture Secretary
Maria Eagle called for Whittingdale to recuse himself from decisions regarding the outcome of the
Leveson Inquiry
The Leveson Inquiry was a judicial public inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press following the News International phone hacking scandal, chaired by Lord Justice Leveson, who was appointed in July 2011. A series o ...
into press ethics because the story about Whittingdale's former girlfriend being a
sex worker
A sex worker is a person who provides sex work, either on a regular or occasional basis. The term is used in reference to those who work in all areas of the sex industry.Oxford English Dictionary, "sex worker"
According to one view, sex work i ...
exposed him to pressure from the press.
A week later, it emerged that Whittingdale had accepted hospitality from the
Lap Dancing Association in about 2008 at which time Whittingdale and two other MPs visited two clubs in one evening, while the industry's licensing was under investigation by the
Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. The hospitality was not declared in the
Register of members' interests, or later when Whittingdale later spoke out in the Commons against new regulations introduced by the Labour Government.
On 14 July 2016, Whittingdale was dismissed from his position as Culture Secretary by the new prime minister,
Theresa May
Theresa Mary May, Lady May (; née Brasier; born 1 October 1956) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2016 to 2019. She previously served in David Cameron's cab ...
.
In July 2016, shortly after his dismissal, ''The Guardian'' criticised Whittingdale over his decision to turn down a request from the ''
Daily Mirror
The ''Daily Mirror'' is a British national daily Tabloid journalism, tabloid. Founded in 1903, it is owned by parent company Reach plc. From 1985 to 1987, and from 1997 to 2002, the title on its Masthead (British publishing), masthead was simpl ...
'' for the release of historic documents relating to
Mark Thatcher's dealings with the
government of Oman in the 1980s.
Roy Greenslade wrote that few, "apart from the man himself and his friends", could disagree with the argument that the public had a right to know.
Whittingdale returned to the DCMS in February 2020, but as a
minister of state
Minister of State is a title borne by politicians in certain countries governed under a parliamentary system. In some countries a Minister of State is a Junior Minister of government, who is assigned to assist a specific Cabinet Minister. I ...
rather than
secretary of state. He was the
minister of state for media and data.
Personal life
Whittingdale married Ancilla Campbell Murfitt, a nurse and school governor, in 1990; the couple had two children before their divorce.
Whittingdale's half-brother is Charles Napier, former treasurer of the defunct
Paedophile Information Exchange, who was most recently convicted of child sexual abuse offences in November 2014.
On 12 April 2016, British media reported Whittingdale had been involved in a relationship with a female sex worker between August 2013 and February 2014. In a statement to the BBC's ''
Newsnight'' programme, he said he had been unaware of his girlfriend's true occupation after meeting her through
Match.com, and that he had ended the relationship after he had discovered it through reports that the story was being offered for publication to
tabloid
Tabloid may refer to:
* Tabloid journalism, a type of journalism
* Tabloid (newspaper format), a newspaper with compact page size
** Chinese tabloid
* Tabloid (paper size), a North American paper size
* Sopwith Tabloid
The Sopwith Tabloid an ...
s.
On 13 April 2016,
David Cameron
David William Donald Cameron (born 9 October 1966) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2005 to 2016. He previously served as Leader o ...
's spokesman said, "John Whittingdale's view was that this was in the past, and had been dealt with."
Whittingdale is a member of the
Church of England
The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Brit ...
.
Honours
* :
**
21 December 1990: Appointed
Officer of the Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations,
and public service outside the civil service. It was established ...
(OBE) in the
1990 Resignation Honours.
** 14 May 2015: Appointed to the
Privy Council of the United Kingdom
The Privy Council (PC), officially His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, is a formal body of advisers to the sovereign of the United Kingdom. Its membership mainly comprises senior politicians who are current or former members of ei ...
, giving him the
honorific prefix
An honorific is a title that conveys esteem, courtesy, or respect for position or rank when used in addressing or referring to a person. Sometimes, the term "honorific" is used in a more specific sense to refer to an honorary academic title. It ...
"
The Right Honourable
''The Right Honourable'' ( abbreviation: ''Rt Hon.'' or variations) is an honorific style traditionally applied to certain persons and collective bodies in the United Kingdom, the former British Empire and the Commonwealth of Nations. The ter ...
" for life.
** 14 October 2022: Appointed a
Knight Bachelor
The title of Knight Bachelor is the basic rank granted to a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not inducted as a member of one of the organised orders of chivalry; it is a part of the British honours system. Knights Bachelor are ...
in the
2022 Special Honours
As part of the British honours system, Special Honours are issued at the Monarch's pleasure at any given time. The Special Honours refer to the awards made within royal prerogative, operational honours, political honours and other honours awarded ...
.
* :
**
2019: Third Class of the
Order of Merit of Ukraine
The Order of Merit ( uk, Орден «За заслуги») (Distinguished service) first, second or third class, is the Ukrainian order of merit, given to individuals for outstanding achievements in economics, science, culture, military or pol ...
References
External links
Official website*
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Whittingdale, John
1959 births
Living people
Alumni of University College London
British Eurosceptics
British Secretaries of State
Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies
English Anglicans
English people of Scottish descent
Knights Bachelor
Members of Parliament for Maldon
Members of the Freedom Association
Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom
Officers of the Order of the British Empire
People educated at Sandroyd School
People educated at Winchester College
People from Sherborne
Politicians awarded knighthoods
Politics of Maldon District
Recipients of the Order of Merit (Ukraine), 3rd class
UK MPs 1992–1997
UK MPs 1997–2001
UK MPs 2001–2005
UK MPs 2005–2010
UK MPs 2010–2015
UK MPs 2015–2017
UK MPs 2017–2019
UK MPs 2019–present