At the
2010 general election, Stroud stood as the
Conservative parliamentary candidate for
Sutton and Cheam, a marginal seat, but came second to the
Liberal Democrat incumbent,
Paul Burstow.
House of Lords Philippa Stroud was made a life peer in October 2015. In March 2018, Stroud made an appeal for the UK to accept more refugee children into the UK and to reunite more children with their families. Her speech garnered support from
Lord Judd,
Lord Tunnicliffe and
Lord Hope, who supported for her call for Britain to remain compassionate in its approach to accepting refugees. In 2020, Stroud became a steering committee member of the lockdown-skeptic
COVID Recovery Group, alongside a group of Conservative MPs who opposed the UK government's
December 2020 lockdown.
Organisations In 2003, alongside
Iain Duncan Smith,
Tim Montgomerie and
Mark Florman, Stroud co-founded the
Centre for Social Justice, After the 2010 general election, Stroud was appointed as a
Special Adviser to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith. This came as billions of pounds were stripped from the social security budget, and so she worked to help create and implement the Government's welfare reforms, including the launch of universal credit. She returned to the
Centre for Social Justice in 2015. In 2016, the Centre for Social Justice suggested that "life chance risks", including growing up in a single-parent household or by parents mired in debt, should be taken into account when assessing whether families could be classed as living in poverty. Stroud claimed that, "we need to look beyond the household income to work out the condition the children are growing up in." Stroud became the chief executive officer of the
Legatum Institute in October 2016. Under her leadership, the think tank has promoted research and ideas demonstrating the opportunities and potential solutions for the UK's trade policies post-Brexit. In 2016, Stroud founded the Social Metrics Commission (SMC) with the aim to create a new UK poverty measure to replace the previous official measure abolished by the Conservative government in 2015. In September 2018 the SMC, led by Stroud, published a report using the new measure of poverty for the UK which went beyond the former official measure (which focused solely on income) by including core living costs such as housing, childcare and disability into the equation. The report found that 14.4 million people were living in poverty in 2017, including 4.5 million children. Stroud called on the Government to use this new measure to focus efforts and attention on creating policies and solutions to alleviate poverty levels in the UK. In December 2023, Stroud was chosen by
Kemi Badenoch to become the next chair of the
Low Pay Commission, replacing Bryan Sanderson. She will take up this role from 1 January 2024, and will serve a three-year term as chair of the commission, which advises the Government on both the living and minimum wage. and on
6 May 2010, as candidate for
Sutton and Cheam, she came second to incumbent
Liberal Democrat Paul Burstow. == Personal life ==