Lee Rowley is the Conservative Party MP for North East Derbyshire, having first been elected to Parliament in 2017. He was re-elected in the 2019 General Election with a majority of 12,876 over the Labour Party.
Derbyshire North East is a rural constituency that largely encircles the town of Chesterfield to the north of Derbyshire. The seat contains the former mining town of Dronfield, alongside a number of rural villages on the edge of the peak district. A number of the local population commute into Sheffield to work. Having been consistently held by the Labour Party since 1935, this seat gave early indications of the fragility of Labour’s red wall, and turned Conservative in 2017. A high 62% of the electorate voted Leave in the 2016 Brexit referendum.
Lee Rowley was appointed as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in September 2021. He was previously the Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party .
Born in 1980, Lee Rowley grew up in North Derbyshire, and comes from a mining family. Both of his grandfathers were miners at pits in the area, including Westhorpe and Shirebrook. He was educated at the local St. Peter and Paul’s, Hasland Infants, Hasland Juniors and St. Mary’s High School, where he was head boy in 1999. He then studied Modern History at Oxford University and read for a master’s degree also in History at the University of Manchester.
Prior to becoming an MP, Rowley worked in financial services and in management consultancy. Before becoming an MP he was Head of Change at Co-op Insurance in Manchester.
Rowley was a councillor on Westminster Council between 2006 and 2014.
A supporter of Brexit, Rowley backed Boris Johnson in the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election.
Rowley is an openly gay MP. He was an accomplished swimmer in his youth, representing his local town.
At Westminster, Lee Rowley is Vice Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Groups on Brain Tumours; Child Contact Centres and Services; Data Analytics; and Ovarian Cancer. He is Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Groups on Fracking.
Email: lee.rowley.mp@parliament.uk
Website – www.lee4ned.com
Twitter – @Lee4NED
