House of Commons Maclean contested the
Birmingham Northfield seat in the general election of
2015, finishing second behind the incumbent Labour Party MP
Richard Burden, who won a majority of 2,509 votes. She voted for the United Kingdom (UK) to remain within the
European Union (EU) in
the June 2016 membership referendum. The following month, Maclean was selected to be the Conservative candidate in the election. She won the seat at the election with 23,652 votes and a majority of 7,363 (16.3%). In Parliament, she sat on the
Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee between September 2017 and June 2018. In 2017, Maclean co-chaired
Andy Street's successful campaign to become the
Mayor of the West Midlands. In February 2018, Maclean was elected to be the chair of the
All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Women in Parliament. She is also the chair of the APPG on Carers and the APPG on Endangered Species. The following month, she was appointed as a
Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) within the
Home Office. In March 2019, Maclean voted for then Prime Minister
Theresa May's Brexit withdrawal agreement. She supported
Michael Gove in the
2019 Conservative Party leadership election. In September 2019, she was appointed as PPS to the
Chancellor of the Exchequer,
Sajid Javid. Maclean was re-elected at the
2019 general election with an increased vote share of 63.3% and an increased majority of 16,036. She was the
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the
Department for Transport in the
Second Johnson ministry since February 2020. In September 2021, following the withdrawal of foreign defence forces from
Afghanistan and takeover by the
Taliban, Maclean was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Minister for Safeguarding) at the Home Office. She succeeded
Victoria Atkins, who simultaneously became
Minister of State for Prisons and Probation at the
Ministry of Justice. Both ministers adopted Government responsibility for the Afghan resettlement programme and
Operation Warm Welcome. On 6 July 2022, Maclean resigned from her position as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding in protest at Prime Minister Boris Johnson's leadership. Maclean backed
Sajid Javid, then
Kemi Badenoch, and finally
Liz Truss in the
July–September 2022 Conservative Party leadership election. She was a member of the
Women and Equalities Committee between November 2022 and May 2023. In 2023 she was appointed
Minister of State for Housing and Planning by
Rishi Sunak before leaving government in the
November 2023 reshuffle. In December 2023, she was accused by political opponents of
transphobia after sharing a social media post about Melissa Poulton, the
Green Party candidate for the
Bromsgrove constituency. The police later reversed their decision to record Maclean's action as a "
non-crime hate incident", and therefore removed all mention of it from their records.
House of Lords In December 2024, Maclean was appointed to join the
House of Lords as a
life peer as part of the
2024 Political Peerages. She formerly served as Director of Strategy to the
Leader of the Opposition,
Kemi Badenoch. On 18 June 2025, she delivered a speech to the
Conservative Women's Organisation, saying "We’ve done the
mea culpas, we’ve done the apologies, we’ve done all that" regarding the reaction to the
2024 general election. ==Personal life==