Nadine Vanessa Dorries (née Bargery; born 21 May 1957) is a British author and former politician who served as Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport from 2021 to 2022. She was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Mid Bedfordshire from 2005 to 2023 for the Conservative Party. Since 2025, she has been a member of Reform UK.
Born in Liverpool to a working-class family, Dorries was raised in the city's district of Anfield and the nearby towns of Halewood and Runcorn. She began work as a trainee nurse in Warrington and subsequently became a medical representative. During her early career, she spent a year in Zambia as head of a community school. After returning to England, she founded Company Kids Ltd, which provided child day-care services for working parents. She sold the company in 1998. She was elected to the House of Commons at the 2005 general election for the Conservative safe seat of Mid Bedfordshire.
As a backbencher, Dorries introduced several unsuccessful private member's bills, including attempts to reduce the time limit for abortions in the UK and changes to the rules regarding counselling for the women involved, and the advocacy of sexual abstinence for girls in sex education. An opponent of John Bercow, she attempted to have him removed as Speaker of the House of Commons. She also clashed with David Cameron and George Osborne, describing them as "two arrogant posh boys".
In 2012, she lost the Conservative whip after she took part in the reality TV programme I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! without informing the chief whip. The whip was returned in 2013 and she was re-admitted to the parliamentary party. During her time on I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! in 2012, she was repeatedly voted by the public to undergo Bushtucker Trials, including one in which she ate an ostrich’s anus.
In July 2019, Boris Johnson appointed Dorries as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Patient Safety, Suicide Prevention and Mental Health. In May 2020, she was promoted to a minister of state. In Johnson's cabinet reshuffle in September 2021, he promoted her to Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Despite being invited to continue in the position, she resigned as Culture Secretary ahead of the formation of the Truss ministry, after Liz Truss took over from Johnson on 6 September 2022.
On 9 June 2023, Dorries announced her intention to stand down as an MP with immediate effect. She later changed her position, saying that she would not proceed with her resignation until she had received information relating to why she had been refused a peerage in Boris Johnson's resignation honours. Following mounting pressure, she formally vacated her seat on 29 August. Dorries had not spoken in the House of Commons since leaving the government in July 2022, or worked on any bill or select committees, and was criticised by both Tory and opposition MPs for allegedly abandoning her constituents.
Dorries was born Nadine Vanessa Bargery in Liverpool on 21 May 1957. Her father was an immigrant Irish Roman Catholic bus driver who became a lift operator. Her mother was an Anglican, and Dorries was raised as such. She was brought up in the Anfield district of Liverpool, where she attended Rose Heath Primary School. In 2016, Dorries said that she had been abused by Anglican vicar and family friend William Cameron, who was made priest-in-charge at St Mary's Anglican church in Halewood in 1966, when she was nine. She said that at the time, she was too ashamed to report this to her parents or authorities, but the stories of child sexual abuse described in novels she wrote as an adult are based on her own experience.
After primary school, she attended Halewood Grange Comprehensive School before moving with her family to Runcorn. She grew up on a council estate and entered nursing in 1975 as a trainee at Warrington General Hospital. According to an interview with The Times in 2014, Dorries's parents divorced during her adolescence. While training to be a nurse at 21, she shared a flat with her father. He died at the age of 42.
From 1978 to 1981, Dorries was a nurse in Warrington and Liverpool according to a 2009 report. When she was a parliamentary candidate in 2001, her CV stated Liverpool and London as places where she worked as a nurse. She left the Liverpool area after she married mining engineer Paul Dorries.
In 1982, Dorries became a medical representative to Ethicla Ltd for a year, before spending a year in Zambia (1983–84) as the head of a community school, where her husband ran a copper mine. In 1987 she founded Company Kids Ltd, which provided child day-care services for working parents. The company was sold in 1998 to BUPA; Dorries was subsequently a director of the health provider during the following year.
As Nadine Bargery, she was selected as the prospective parliamentary candidate (PPC) for Hazel Grove, near Manchester in spring 2000. Her candidacy split the constituency party, and she was briefly deselected in August before being imposed by Conservative Central Office. Standing for the seat at the 2001 general election, she was unsuccessful in her attempt to succeed the Liberal Democrat candidate Andrew Stunell, who retained the seat with a majority of 8,435 votes. Dorries worked for three years as a special adviser to Oliver Letwin, when Shadow Chancellor, to sort out his relations with the media amongst other things.
Parliamentary career (2005–2023)
Dorries won the Conservative candidacy for the safe seat of Mid Bedfordshire in 2005 on the retirement through ill health after a series of scandals of Jonathan Sayeed. In 2009, she gave this account of her selection:
Three weeks before the 2005 general election I, a council estate Scouser, was selected as the Conservative candidate to represent a southern rural constituency. Because the vacancy occurred so quickly and so close to D-day, the party provided my association with a shortlist of seventeen candidates, of which about five were women. Following a long day of interviews in hot sunny rooms, the list was whittled down to a shortlist of three ... I was informed that I had been selected outright on the first ballot ... That pride, that sense of achievement, the knowledge that I was selected on the basis of my performance and merit above all other candidates on that day is what enables me to hold my head up high in this place.
Dorries's account of her own selection appears to contradict a news report which The Times ran at the time, reporting that Conservative Campaign Headquarters placed a majority of women on the shortlist and pressed for the selection of a female candidate:
Mrs Dorries, who has three teenage children, easily beat her 11 rivals and won the plum safe seat on the first ballot at the selection this weekend. Party officials were thrilled that the seat has gone to a woman. Previously, only two women had been selected in the 17 safe seats where sitting MPs have retired. Senior party figures had made clear to local dignitaries that they would like the seat to go to a woman and presented the constituency with a shortlist of seven women and five men to underline the point.
Dorries was elected to the House of Commons at the 2005 general election with a majority of 11,355, and made her maiden speech on 25 May 2005.
Dorries initially supported David Davis to become Conservative leader in 2005, later withdrawing her endorsement. She stated that David Cameron, the successful candidate, "represented everything that through my life ... [I have] been suspicious of." In May 2007, she criticised Cameron for ignoring the recommendations of the Conservative public policy working group in favour of grammar schools. However, she did defend the selection of Liz Truss in 2009, whose Conservative candidature was called into question after an extra-marital affair was revealed.