31 Facts About Damian Collins

Damian Noel Thomas Collins was born on 4 February 1974 and is a British Conservative Party politician who formerly served as a junior Minister for Tech and the Digital Economy in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport between July and October 2022.

Damian Collins has been the Member of Parliament for Folkestone and Hythe since the 2010 general election.

From 2016 to 2019, Collins was chair of the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee.

In 2021, Damian Collins chaired the UK Parliament Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill.

Damian Collins was educated at St Mary's Roman Catholic High School, a state voluntary aided comprehensive school in the village of Lugwardine in Herefordshire, followed by Belmont Abbey School, a former boarding independent school in Hereford, where he studied for his A Levels.

Damian Collins then studied Modern History at St Benet's Hall at the University of Oxford, graduating in 1996.

In 1995 Damian Collins was President of the Oxford University Conservative Association.

From 2003 to 2004 Damian Collins was the Political Officer of the Bow Group think tank, and contributed to its 2006 publication Conservative Revival: Blueprint for a Better Britain.

At the 2005 general election, Damian Collins stood as the Conservative parliamentary candidate in Northampton North, where he finished in second place to sitting Labour MP Sally Keeble who was re-elected with a majority of 3,960 votes.

In May 2006, Damian Collins was included on the "A-list" of Conservative parliamentary candidates, created following the election of David Cameron as Leader of the Conservative Party.

On 13 July 2006, Damian Collins was selected as prospective parliamentary candidate for the constituency of Folkestone and Hythe in Kent, succeeding as Conservative candidate for the seat to Michael Howard, a former Home Secretary and Leader of the Conservative Party, who had announced his decision to step down from the House of Commons.

Damian Collins made his maiden speech in the House of Commons on 27 May 2010 in the Queen's Speech debate.

Damian Collins spoke about the new Conservative-Liberal Coalition Government's energy and environmental policy, and his support for a new nuclear power station at Dungeness in his constituency.

On 12 July 2010, Damian Collins became a member of the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee.

On 10 September 2012, Damian Collins was made Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Theresa Villiers.

In July 2014, Damian Collins was appointed as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond.

In 2016 Damian Collins was elected as chair of the Culture, Media and Sport select committee and was re-elected unopposed following the 2017 general election of the newly renamed Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee.

Damian Collins remained Chair until the dissolution of Parliament on 6 November 2019.

On 27 July 2021, Damian Collins was elected Chair of the UK Parliament Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill, responsible for pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill.

Damian Collins was reappointed to his ministerial office following her victory in the contest.

In January 2015, following a panel at the European Parliament hosted by MEPs Ivo Belet, Marc Tarabella and Emma McClarkin, Damian Collins launched campaign group New FIFA Now with former Football Federation Australia Head of Corporate and Public Affairs Bonita Mersiades and businessman Jaimie Fuller, calling for an independent, non-governmental reform committee to address allegations of corruption and promote financial transparency at FIFA.

In May 2020, Damian Collins warned that the COVID-19 pandemic had "badly exposed the weak financial position of clubs in the English Football League, many of whom were already on the edge of bankruptcy", calling along with the Football Supporters' Association for a new Football Finance Authority.

In November 2018, for the first time since 1933, when the Joint Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform included parliamentarians from India, Damian Collins invited parliamentarians from around the world to the House of Commons in London to form an 'International Grand Committee' to discuss disinformation and data privacy.

Damian Collins called for anti-vaccine conspiracy theories to be defined as a category of harmful content in the UK Online Safety Bill, that social media platforms would have a responsibility to protect their users from viewing and sharing.

In March 2020 Damian Collins co-founded a fact-checking service called Infotagion to counter COVID-related disinformation, and in September 2020 joined the Real Facebook Oversight Board.

Damian Collins has said that he believes social media platforms facilitated the storming of Capitol Hill on 6 January 2021.

Damian Collins was critical of Facebook's decision to withdraw news services in February 2021 following a dispute with the Australian Government.

Michael Damian Collins later emigrated, in the mid-1950s, with his wife and children to Great Britain, where the family settled in Northampton.

Damian Collins's father was aged six when the family moved to Britain.

Damian Collins is married to Sarah Richardson, who served as Lord Mayor of Westminster from 2013 to 2014.

Damian Collins is the biographer of Sir Philip Sassoon in Charmed Life: The Phenomenal World of Philip Sassoon and wrote the chapters on David Lloyd George and Theodore Roosevelt for Iain Dale's The Prime Ministers and The Presidents.