At the
1992 general election, Whittingdale was elected as MP for
South Colchester and Maldon with 54.8% of the vote and a majority of 21,821. After the election, he was appointed
parliamentary private secretary to
Eric Forth,
Minister of State for Education and Employment, but resigned 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. Prior to the
1997 general election, Whittingdale's constituency of South Colchester and Maldon was abolished and replaced with
Maldon and East Chelmsford. Whittingdale was elected at the 1997 general election as MP for Maldon and East Chelmsford with 48.7% of the vote and a majority of 10,039. In 1999, Whittingdale became
parliamentary private secretary to the
Leader of the Opposition, succeeding
David Lidington. At the
2001 general election, Whittingdale was re-elected as MP for Maldon and East Chelmsford with an increased vote share of 49.2% and a decreased majority of 8,462. He was again re-elected at the
2005 general election, with an increased vote share of 51.5% and an increased majority of 12,573. Prior to the
2010 general election, Whittingdale's constituency of Maldon and East Chelmsford was abolished and replaced with
Maldon. At the general election, Whittingdale was elected as MP for Maldon with 59.8% of the vote and a majority of 19,407. In April 2011 Whittingdale called for a public inquiry into phone hacking at the
News of the World and to why a series of investigations by
Scotland Yard failed to link any
News International employees to phone hacking other than the
News of the World's former royal editor,
Clive Goodman. Whittingdale said: "There are some very big questions; what I find [most] worrying 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." In 2012, Whittingdale was Chairman of the
Joint Parliamentary Committee on Privacy and Injunctions. From 2012 to 2019 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. At the
2015 general election, Whittingdale was re-elected as MP for Maldon with an increased vote share of 60.6% and an increased majority of 22,070. Whittingdale was in favour of
Brexit during the
2016 EU membership referendum. Following the referendum, he was one of several Conservative MPs who signed a letter to Prime Minister
Theresa May urging that the UK withdraw from both the
European single market and the
Customs Union. After the referendum, Whittingdale was a supporter of the Eurosceptic campaign
Leave Means Leave. At the snap
2017 general election, Whittingdale was again re-elected with an increased vote share of 67.9% and an increased majority of 23,430. He was again re-elected at the
2019 general election with an increased vote share of 72% and an increased majority of 30,041. Whittingdale was again re-elected at the
2024 general election, with a decreased vote share of 38.9% and a decreased majority of 6,906. In a debate with the UK Parliament House of Commons on March 2024, Whittingdale expressed support for the
Armenian refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh, citing the “humanitarian need to support refugees”, as well as supporting for closer relations with
Armenia.
Media Select Committee On 14 July 2005 Whittingdale became the chairman of the
Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. In this role he led the committee's investigation in 2009 and 2010 into libel and privacy issues, including the
News International phone hacking scandal after
The Guardian first revealed the extent of the practice at the
News of the World. 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. 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 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 Spectators 2011 "Inquisitor of the Year" award on behalf of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. He is played by
Patrick Baladi in the 2025 ITV drama about the hacking scandal,
The Hack.
Culture Secretary Whittingdale was appointed
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport by Prime Minister
David Cameron on 11 May 2015. He was sworn in to the
Privy Council 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 into press ethics because the story about Whittingdale's former girlfriend being a
sex worker exposed him to pressure from the press. On 14 July 2016, Whittingdale was dismissed from his position as Culture Secretary by the new prime minister,
Theresa May. Whittingdale returned to the DCMS in February 2020, but as a
minister of state rather than
secretary of state. He was the
minister of state for media and data. Having left the department in 2021, Whittingdale once again returned to DCMS in May 2023, being appointed Acting
Minister of State for Media, Tourism and Creative Industries, as well as Minister of State at the
Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, effective when
Julia Lopez took maternity leave. ==Personal life==