Alex Burghart was first elected in Brentwood and Ongar on 8th June 2017 with a Conservative majority of 24,002. He was re-elected on 12th December 2019 with an increased majority of 29,065. Alex was elected for the third time as Member of Parliament for Brentwood and Ongar on 4th July 2024, and was appointed at the Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
Alex is a former teacher and the son of two teachers. The first person in his family to go to university, he read history at Oxford before taking his doctorate at King’s College London where he taught and lectured.
He then worked at the Department for Education on the Munro Review of Child Protection, before spending four years as Director of Policy at the Centre for Social Justice where he led research on housing, welfare, education, and family policy. Between 2016 and 2017 he was a Special Adviser to the Prime Minister on social justice in 10 Downing Street.
He was a member of the Board of Yarlington Housing Group, was a governor at Queensmill School for children with autism, and has written for the Spectator, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Evening Standard.
Alex has been a member of the Work and Pensions Select Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights and was previously a Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Attorney General, The Rt Hon Geoffrey Cox QC MP, and to the Northern Ireland Secretary of State, The Rt Hon Karen Bradley MP. He was also Co-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Adverse Childhood Experiences. Alex was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Prime Minister, The Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP, from July 2019 until September 2021 and was the Minister for Skills with the Department for Education from September 2021 to July 2022. Alex served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Work and Pensions before becoming Parliamentary Secretary in the Cabinet Office in October 2022.
