Brine worked in the
Conservative Central Office as a researcher during
William Hague's leadership, and was the campaign director for the party in Hampshire during the 2001−2005 parliament. He was selected as the party's
prospective parliamentary candidate (PPC) for
Winchester in November 2006. Brine was a member of the party's
A-List. His ideology was based on
one-nation conservatism. In November 2022, he was elected chair of the
Health and Social Care Select Committee. He was elected as MP for Winchester in the 2010 general election with a majority of 3,048 (5.4%) votes. The seat had previously been held by the Liberal Democrat MP
Mark Oaten since the 1997 general election, who had stood down prior to the 2010 general election. During the 2010−2015 parliament, he was a member of the
Justice Select Committee. Brine was one of 136 Conservative MPs who voted against the
Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, which legalised same-sex marriage in England and Wales. His reason for voting against the Act was that he felt that the bill had been rushed and he alleged that it was an issue that had he had received the most opposition to from many of his constituents. In the same year, he was appointed as
parliamentary private secretary (PPS) to
Mike Penning, Minister of State at the Department for Work & Pensions and Minister for Disabled People. In July 2014, Brine became PPS to Penning in his new role as Minister of State for Policing within the Ministry of Justice. He was re-elected in the 2015 and 2017 general election. In May 2015, Brine became PPS to
Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Health. Following the appointment of
Theresa May as the prime minister in July 2016, he was appointed as assistant government whip at HM Treasury, a role he held till June 2017 when he was promoted to
Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Public Health and Primary Care at the Department of Health. Brine supported the UK remaining within the EU in the
2016 UK EU membership referendum. He voted for then Prime Minister
Theresa May's Brexit withdrawal agreement in early 2019. In the indicative votes on 27 March, Brine voted for single market membership, customs union with the EU, the
Norway-plus model, and against a
no-deal Brexit. He had resigned from his ministerial post two days prior. Brine supported Jeremy Hunt in the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election. He voted for the legalisation of same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland. In September 2019, he was one of 21 MPs
expelled from the Conservative Party for voting for the
European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act 2019 which aimed to prevent a no-deal Brexit. Brine was one of 10 MPs to be readmitted to the party on 29 October. He was re-elected in the 2019 general election, with his majority falling from 9,999 to 985. He called for MPs and their staff to be prioritised for the COVID-19 vaccine in January 2021 and for all COVID-19 legislative restrictions to be removed by the end of April 2021. Following the publication of civil servant
Sue Gray's report into the
Partygate scandal, Brine submitted a letter of no confidence in Prime Minister Boris Johnson calling for his resignation in May 2022. He initially endorsed
Jeremy Hunt in the
July 2022 Conservative Party leadership election but when Hunt was eliminated from the contest he endorsed
Rishi Sunak. In November 2022, he was selected by fellow MPs to be the chair of the
Health and Social Care Select Committee. After being appointed, Brine said his priorities as chair were to get "better value for our money" from the NHS and improving young people's mental health care. In June 2023, he announced that he would be standing down as an MP at the
2024 general election.
Lobbying Outside of his parliamentary role, he was also a strategic advisor for the pharmaceuticals company Sigma, healthcare recruitment firm Remedium Partners, and assistive technology company Microlink PC. He ended his involvement with these companies at the end of 2021 following then Prime Minister Boris Johnson's suggestion that he would ban MPs from having consultancy jobs following the
Owen Patterson lobbying scandal. In March 2023, it was announced that the
Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Daniel Greenberg would be starting an investigation into further lobbying allegations related to his work as a paid advisor for Remedium. This followed the release of leaked
WhatsApp messages by
The Daily Telegraph as part of the
Lockdown Files in which he stated in early 2021 that he had been "trying for months to help the NHS through a company I am connected with – called Remedium" and that he had attempted to contact the then
Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock and
Chief Executive of NHS England Simon Stevens but had been rebuffed. Brine commented in response to the leak of the messages that he had been acting in the "national interest" in a "national crisis" and that "Ultimately, it led nowhere let alone secure any business for Remedium". ==Post-parliamentary career==