Gillian Keegan

In February 2020 Keegan was appointed parliamentary under secretary of state at the Department for Education.

In February 2019, Keegan was appointed as MP Apprenticeship Ambassador by Anne Milton, with responsibility to support apprenticeship schemes and promote them both within Parliament and to businesses within the UK, working alongside the Apprenticeship Ambassador Network consisting of various advocates of apprenticeship schemes.

Keegan endorsed Rory Stewart during the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election.

Gillian Keegan became Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the Home Secretary in May 2019. Gillian became PPS to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in September 2019.

Keegan was selected as the Conservative Parliamentary candidate for the Chichester constituency in May 2017, and was elected to the House of Commons in the General Election held on 8 June 2017. In September 2017, she was appointed to the Public Accounts Committee. Gillian Keegan was appointed PPS to HM Treasury in September 2018. In January 2019 Gillian Keegan became Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Defence.

Keegan was a member of the Board of Governors of Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust from 2015 to 2017.

Keegan says that it was her experiences of trade unionism and the Militant-controlled Liverpool City Council while working in Kirkby that convinced her to support the Conservative Party. However, she did not become active in politics until 2014. In 2015, she was advised in her ambitions to become an MP by Justine Greening, whom she met by chance at a London Business School (LBS) reunion; according to her, this demonstrated the power of the LBS network. She unsuccessfully contested the constituency of St Helens South and Whiston in the 2015 general election. In 2015 she became Director of Women2Win—an organisation founded by Theresa May and Baroness Anne Jenkin in 2005 to help elect more women Conservative MPs to Parliament. She had left that position by September 2017.

Keegan was elected as a councillor for the Rogate ward on Chichester District Council in 2014. She was appointed cabinet member for commercial services in May 2015. She stood down as a councillor in February 2018 and in the election that followed in April 2018, the seat was taken by the Liberal Democrat candidate Kate O'Kelly. Keegan went on to beat O'Kelly by 21,490 votes in the General Election in December 2019.

Keegan grew up in Knowsley, Merseyside, and went to St Augustine of Canterbury Secondary School (renamed St Thomas Becket Catholic High School) in Huyton. She has a bachelor's degree in Business Studies from Liverpool John Moores University and a Master of Science in Strategy and Leadership (Sloan Fellowship) from London Business School in 2011.

Gillian Keegan (born 13 March 1968) is a British Conservative Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Chichester since the 2017 general election. She is the constituency's first female MP. In February 2020 she was appointed as the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Apprenticeships and Skills.