Julian Knight

In January 2020 Knight was elected as Chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. Knight beat incumbent Chair, Damian Collins, by 9 votes to win the Committee. In the election he pledged to “get the BBC sorted, get broadband sorted, and get progress in sport sorted.”

Knight once again defended his seat during the 2019 General Election. He once again increased his majority, this time to 21,273. The Liberal Democrats were again pushed into third place by Labour.

In January 2018, Knight was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Ministry of Justice providing support to Ministers. In September 2018 he moved to the Department for Work and Pensions before moving to HM Treasury in January 2019.

Knight also serves as the Prime Ministerial Trade Envoy to Mongolia, where he forms part of a network of parliamentarians with the role to strengthen relations with foreign countries, and aide British businesses in accessing foreign markets. In April 2018, Knight made his first visit to the country as Trade Envoy. Knight is due to make his second visit in September 2018.

Knight defended his seat at the 2017 general election and was returned with an increased majority.

Prior to the 2016 referendum on the UK's membership within the European Union, Knight campaigned to remain but now backs the Conservative Party policy of exiting the EU.

Since December 2016 he has served on the Culture, Media, and Sport Committee, later the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee. In that role he has made several high-profile interventions, including on the BBC gender pay row and against Facebook and disgraced digital company Cambridge Analytica during the Committee's inquiry into 'fake news'.

In April 2015, Knight was criticised for a book he authored on tax avoidance. In his 2004 book, 'Wills, Probate and Inheritance Tax for Dummies', Knight "sets out ways that hardworking parents can pass on the graft of a lifetime" to their children. In the book, he is critical of the system of Inheritance Tax that existed at the point of publishing. He distinguished between personal tax avoidance, which he advised families on, and the "aggressive tax avoidance" of some multinational companies.

From July 2015 to April 2017, Knight served as a member of the House of Commons Communities and Local Government Committee, during which time he co-sponsored the Government's Homelessness Reduction Act 2017.

In 2014, Knight was selected to be the Conservative candidate for Solihull, a former Conservative safe seat which had been won by the Liberal Democrats in the 2005 General Election. At the 2015 general election Knight won the seat back for the Conservatives with a majority of 12,902, after an 11.9 per cent swing towards the Conservatives.

After graduating with a 2:2, Knight moved to London to find work, doing a variety of jobs before finding a job on a local newspaper. He moved up in journalism over the intervening years, working for the BBC as personal finance and consumer affairs reporter for five years until 2007, working across online, TV and radio. In 2007 he became the Money and Property Editor of The Independent on Sunday.

Julian Carlton Knight (born 5 January 1972) is a British Conservative Party politician. He was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Solihull in 2015.

Knight was born in 1972 in Chester, and grew up in a lone parent family. He attended Chester Catholic High School, and went on to study History at the University of Hull, the first in his family to do so.