White unsuccessfully contested the Labour stronghold of
Birmingham Hall Green at the
2001 general election, then the
marginal Warwick and Leamington at the
2005 general election, but was again unsuccessful. In May 2008, he was elected to
Warwick District Council. At the 2010 general election, he gained Warwick and Leamington for the Conservatives, receiving 20,876 votes to the incumbent Labour MP
James Plaskitt's 17,363 votes, winning by a margin of 3,513 votes. White had a notional
swing of 8.8% from Labour to his party (the boundaries had been changed since the previous election). He held the seat in the
2015 general election with an increased vote of 24,249 (47.9%), leading with a majority of 6,606 votes over Labour's Lynnette Kelly. He is Vice-Chair of cross-party
UK think tank Policy Connect and a patron of the
Leamington Spa-based peacebuilding charity
Cord. White proposed the
Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 in 2010 as a
private member's bill, aiming to ensure that public sector procurement should take into account wider value to the community provided by suppliers. The bill, which purported to help social enterprises win more public services contracts, was supported by the government and became law in 2013 He was subsequently named as a "Social Value Ambassador" by the government, but was dismissed from the role four months later following rebelling on a vote to intervene militarily in Syria. White was opposed to
Brexit prior to the
2016 referendum. In February 2016 he was elected chair of the
Committees on Arms Export Controls. In the
2017 general election, he lost his seat to the
Labour candidate,
Matt Western. In May 2018, White was announced as the inaugural Director of the Institute for Industrial Strategy at
King's College London. ==References==