Minister of State at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport
Julia Lopez MP has represented the constituency of Hornchurch & Upminster in parliament since June 2017 and is the Minister for Media, Data & Digital Infrastructure. She is responsible for government policy on telecoms and digital infrastructure; data; cyber security and digital identity; and media and the creative industries.
Julia read Social and Political Sciences at Queen’s College, University of Cambridge. After university, Julia moved to East London and entered elected politics for the first time in 2014 as a councillor in Tower Hamlets in order to fight corruption, electoral fraud and maladministration in the borough. During this time she sat on the strategic planning committee, deciding large-scale developments in urban regeneration areas across the East End and in Canary Wharf, and led investigations on free schools and reform of youth services after widespread allegations of misconduct.
Julia’s career has involved leading the office of a Central London MP, where she worked with financial and professional services firms in the City of London and ran campaigns to support the creative industries. She has co-authored two books on the financial crash and its aftermath, and was writing her own book, London in the Noughties, on the capital’s development in the new millennium before her election to parliament. Julia worked with the International Office of the Conservative Party to strengthen international trade, democratic systems and party alliances in developing nations and across Europe in the run-up to the Brexit referendum. She was also a trustee of education charity, Inspire Malawi, which builds schools and trains teachers in rural communities in Malawi.