Conversative MP Dame Caroline Dinenage has been named as chair for the Culture, Media and Sports Committee, within which gambling policy is debated and scrutinised.
Dame Dinenage, who has served as the MP for Gosport since 2010, held onto her seat at this year’s general election with 40.3% of the vote, despite gains made by Labour and Reform UK.
She retains the chair, having led the committee since May 2023. Her reappointment comes as parliament reconvenes after Labour swept into power in July to give Sir Keir Starmer the keys to 10 Downing Street.
MPs returned to the House of Commons on 2 September after the summer recess, with Labour now holding 411 seats to the Tories’ 121.
The Gosport MP has previously held a host of government positions, including as minister of state for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport – as it was then known – between February 2020 and September 2021.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport subsequently divested into the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), which oversees gambling, and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
It is yet to be confirmed who the remaining members of the committee will be, although a raft of changes are expected.
The shakeup is due to past members in the previous parliament no longer serving as MPs, either having lost their seat or stepping down ahead of the general election.
They include Conservative Giles Watling, who lost his Clacton seat to Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, and fellow party member Damian Green who stepped down in his Ashford constituency.
Speaking on her appointment, Dame Dinenage said: “I’m delighted to be re-elected to chair the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, and entrusted to build on our achievements in the last parliament.
“These sectors are our global economic superpower; they have remarkable abilities to drive regeneration and bring communities together.
“I will continue to work cross-party to ensure the government doesn’t take them for granted and they continue to fire on all cylinders.”
Last December, the DCMS committee published a report on gambling regulation that called for a limit to minors’ exposure to ads and that there was “scope for further regulation” beyond the parameters of the white paper, which came out of the Gambling Act 2005 review.
Image credit: UK Parliament CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
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