1. Nadine Vanessa Dorries is a British author and a former politician who served as Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport from 2021 to 2022.
87 Facts About Nadine Dorries
1. 2.
Nadine Dorries was Member of Parliament for Mid Bedfordshire from 2005 to 2023 for the Conservative Party.
3.
Nadine Dorries began work as a trainee nurse in Warrington and subsequently became a medical representative.
4.
Nadine Dorries was elected to the House of Commons at the 2005 general election for the Conservative safe seat of Mid Bedfordshire.
5.
Nadine Dorries clashed with David Cameron and George Osborne, describing them as "two arrogant posh boys".
6.
On 9 June 2023, Nadine Dorries announced her intention to stand down as an MP with immediate effect.
7.
Nadine Dorries 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.
8.
Nadine 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.
9.
Nadine Dorries's father, a Catholic of Irish descent, was a bus driver who became a lift operator.
10.
Nadine Dorries's mother was an Anglican, and Dorries was raised as such.
11.
Nadine Dorries was brought up in the Anfield district of Liverpool, where she attended Rose Heath Primary School.
12.
In 2016, Nadine 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.
13.
Nadine Dorries grew up on a council estate and entered nursing in 1975 as a trainee at Warrington General Hospital.
14.
From 1978 to 1981, Nadine Dorries was a nurse in Warrington and Liverpool according to a 2009 report.
15.
Nadine Dorries's CV when she was a parliamentary candidate in 2001 stated Liverpool and London as places where she worked as a nurse.
16.
Nadine Dorries left the Liverpool area after she married mining engineer Paul Dorries.
17.
In 1982, Nadine Dorries became a medical representative to Ethicla Ltd for a year, before spending a year in Zambia as the head of a community school, where her husband ran a copper mine.
18.
Nadine Dorries was sold in 1998 to BUPA; Dorries was a director of the health provider during the following year.
19.
Nadine 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.
20.
Nadine 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.
21.
Mrs Nadine 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.
22.
Nadine 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.
23.
Nadine Dorries initially supported David Davis to become Conservative leader in 2005, later withdrawing her endorsement.
24.
In May 2008, Nadine Dorries featured in the Channel 4 Dispatches documentary "In God's Name".
25.
In February 2010 Nadine Dorries took part in the Channel 4 documentary series Tower Block of Commons, in which MPs stay with welfare claimants.
26.
In October 2013, Nadine Dorries described a fellow Conservative MP, Kris Hopkins, as "one of parliament's slimiest, nastiest MPs" on her Twitter account, and criticised Prime Minister Cameron's decision to promote Hopkins to a junior ministerial post within the Department for Communities and Local Government as "a really awful decision".
27.
McBride resigned and Nadine Dorries denounced the accusation as libellous: "[t]he allegations regarding myself are 100 per cent untrue", and demanded an apology intent on exposing the Number 10 "cesspit".
28.
The newspaper queried hotel bills, including one for 'Mr N Nadine Dorries': these had been disallowed by the Fees Office and Nadine Dorries said they were submitted by mistake.
29.
In January 2010, it was reported that Nadine Dorries was still being investigated by John Lyon, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, regarding her claim for second home expenses.
30.
On 9 May 2010, two days after being returned at the general election for Mid Bedfordshire, The Times reported that Nadine Dorries was facing the first complaint about an MP's expenses claim of the new parliament.
31.
Nadine Dorries insisted that she had indeed published the report, placing a photograph of it on her blog.
32.
Nadine Dorries subsequently told the Biggleswade Advertiser that the report was never printed and a credit note issued with refund on 13 September 2008.
33.
On 13 January 2011, it was reported by the Daily Mirror that police were investigating Nadine Dorries concerning her expenses.
34.
In February 2013, it was reported that Nadine Dorries was being investigated by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority over her expenses, although no specific details were given at this time.
35.
On 27 June 2013, Nadine Dorries announced she would no longer claim her personal expenses as an MP, but would draw on her salary for such costs.
36.
Nadine Dorries argued that she would be in a better position to campaign for the abolition of the present expenses arrangements by doing so.
37.
Nadine Dorries stood for election as a deputy speaker after one of the three posts became vacant.
38.
On 21 October 2010, the MP's standards watchdog criticised Nadine Dorries for maintaining a blog which would "mislead constituents" as to how much actual time she was spending in her constituency.
39.
Nadine Dorries gave an explanation of the statement to her local newspaper, in which she said that her whereabouts on her blog had been disguised, on police advice, because of unwanted attention.
40.
Nadine Dorries said that she made the statement in order to protect her staff and family.
41.
Nadine Dorries met the Prime Minister of Equatorial Guinea, Ignacio Milam Tang.
42.
Early in November 2012, it was announced that Nadine Dorries had agreed to appear on I'm a Celebrity.
43.
The series began on 11 November 2012, but on 21 November, Nadine Dorries became the first contestant to be voted off the show.
44.
Nadine Dorries then sat as an independent MP, but continued to deny the whip had been withdrawn, stating it had merely been suspended.
45.
On 8 May 2013, Nadine Dorries regained the Conservative whip without any conditions having been applied.
46.
George Osborne reportedly objected to her regaining the parliamentary whip, while commentators speculated that, should she not be readmitted, Nadine Dorries might join UKIP, which had made gains from the Conservatives in the previous week's local elections.
47.
Peter Oborne observed at this point that Nadine Dorries had still not declared the amount she was paid for her appearance on I'm a Celebrity.
48.
Andy McSmith, writing in The Independent at the beginning of December 2013, said that Nadine Dorries had finally disclosed her income from appearing on I'm a Celebrity.
49.
Nadine Dorries called for Cameron to resign during the campaign in May 2016, and submitted a letter of no confidence to Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee.
50.
BuzzFeed reported that in October 2017 Nadine Dorries had become confused about her party's position on Brexit after talking with a politics teacher about a key element of her party's position, Britain's proposed exit from the European Union Customs Union.
51.
From a semi-private discussion that BuzzFeed made public, it was suggested that Nadine Dorries believed the UK could leave the EU but stay within the Customs Union whilst at the same time negotiating free trade deals with other countries.
52.
When Boris Johnson became prime minister in July 2019, Nadine Dorries was appointed as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Patient Safety, Suicide Prevention and Mental Health at the Department of Health and Social Care.
53.
Nadine Dorries was promoted in May 2020 to the ministerial rank of Minister of State for Patient Safety, Suicide Prevention and Mental Health.
54.
On 10 March 2020, Nadine Dorries became the first MP to be diagnosed with COVID-19.
55.
On 14 May 2020, Nadine Dorries was criticised after she retweeted a doctored video from a far-right Twitter account which falsely claimed that Labour leader Keir Starmer obstructed the prosecution of grooming gangs while he served as Director of Public Prosecutions.
56.
In November 2020, Nadine Dorries attracted media criticism after rejecting an offer of cross-party talks to discuss a mental health support package for frontline NHS and care staff during the COVID-19 pandemic.
57.
On 15 September 2021, Nadine Dorries was promoted as Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport following Oliver Dowden's appointment as Conservative Party Co-chairman.
58.
Nadine Dorries is a critic of what she believes to be elitism in the BBC and favoured "BBC reform".
59.
In February 2022, amidst a controversy over a joke about Romani genocide, made by Jimmy Carr on a Netflix special, Nadine Dorries said that the government would bring in legislation to "hold to account" streaming companies for offensive content.
60.
Nadine Dorries said there was no disconnect between this view and her previous opinions that "left-wing snowflakes are killing comedy".
61.
In July 2022, Nadine Dorries personally granted Grade II listed status to a plaque of Cecil Rhodes in Oxford which she stated was of "special historic interest".
62.
On 5 September 2022, in anticipation of the appointment of Liz Truss as prime minister, Nadine Dorries tendered her resignation as culture secretary and returned to the back benches.
63.
Truss had asked Nadine Dorries to stay on as Secretary of State in her new government, but Nadine Dorries instead decided to step down to concentrate on writing books.
64.
On 9 February 2023, Nadine Dorries announced that she would not seek re-election at the next general election, blaming "infighting and stupidity" that led to the July 2022 government crisis and Johnson's resignation.
65.
Nadine Dorries stated that she had submitted a subject access request to the House of Lords Appointments Commission and was waiting to resign until she had received all unredacted "WhatsApps, text messages, all emails and minutes of meetings" related to why she was denied a peerage.
66.
Nadine Dorries was one of ten parliamentarians personally named in a Commons Select Committee of Privileges special report on the "co-ordinated campaign of interference in the work of the Privileges Committee", published on 28 June 2023.
67.
Nadine Dorries claimed that the criticism concerning her conduct and associated calls to resign were down to "political opponents, such as Labour-run Flitwick town council are choosing the summer and news-hungry outlets in the summer recess to be noted".
68.
In 2023 it emerged that Nadine Dorries was writing a book intended to cover the downfall of Boris Johnson, titled The Plot.
69.
Nadine Dorries alleges that this secretive group tried to install Stephen Gilbert as the head of Ofcom instead of Michael Grade, who eventually got the job.
70.
Nadine Dorries means to show that Boris Johnson was deposed by plotters who had raised up and brought down his predecessors.
71.
Nadine Dorries, described as "a right-wing, working-class Conservative", is a member of the socially conservative Cornerstone Group.
72.
Nadine Dorries says she witnessed "botched" abortions on two occasions, an experience that influenced her campaign to lower the point during a pregnancy at which an abortion can be performed.
73.
On 31 October 2006, Nadine Dorries introduced a private member's bill in the House of Commons, which would have reduced the time limit for abortion in Great Britain from 24 to 21 weeks; introduced a ten-day 'cooling-off' period for women wishing to have an abortion, during which time the woman would be required to undergo counselling; and accelerate access to abortion at the end of the cooling-off period.
74.
Nadine Dorries said she had received death threats from activists and was given police protection.
75.
In May 2008, Nadine Dorries tabled an amendment to the proposed Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill seeking to reduce the upper limit for abortions from the current 24 weeks of pregnancy to 20 weeks.
76.
Nadine Dorries's amendment was defeated by 332 votes to 190, with a separate 22-week limit opposed by 304 votes to 233.
77.
Nadine Dorries proposed amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill 2011 which would have blocked abortion services such as BPAS and Marie Stopes International from providing counselling services.
78.
Nadine Dorries argued that these organisations had a vested financial interest in encouraging abortions, but according to Zoe Williams "independent" counselling services could be "faith-based groups" intent on discouraging women from having an abortion.
79.
Nadine Dorries opposed the government's successful legislation to introduce same-sex marriage.
80.
Nadine Dorries argued that there was no provision for adultery, or faithlessness, as it might apply to gay couples because the term applies to heterosexual couples only.
81.
Nadine Dorries said that Johnson "did not go far enough", saying the burka should have no place in Britain and it was "shameful that countries like France and Denmark are way ahead of us on this".
82.
Nadine Dorries described his election as "a two-fingered salute to the British people from Labour MPs, and to the Conservative Party".
83.
Nadine Dorries was reportedly part of a plot to oust Bercow from the speaker's chair in the run-up to the 2010 general election, and, after the election, sent an email to all new MPs advocating his removal.
84.
On 6 March 2012, Nadine Dorries criticised Cameron and Nick Clegg of the coalition government over their taxation policies.
85.
In 2009 though, Nadine Dorries was highly critical of Cameron's proposal to consider using all-women shortlists, arguing against a move which would create "two classes of MPs".
86.
Nadine Dorries married mining engineer Paul Nadine Dorries in 1984 with whom she had three daughters before separating in 2007 and subsequently divorcing.
87.
Nadine Dorries was sworn in as a member of the Privy Council on 20 September 2021 at Balmoral Castle.