Alicia Kearns MP - Who is the foreign affairs committee chair?

Alicia Kearns is the Conservative MP for Rutland and Melton, having first been elected to Parliament in the 2019 general election.

The Rutland and Melton constituency is found within the county of Leicestershire and covers the towns of Melton Mowbray, Oakham and the surrounding area. It has long been a safe Conservative seat, and Alicia Kearns was elected with a majority of 26,924 in 2019.

In October 2022, Alicia Kearns was elected as the Chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

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Born in 1987, Alicia Kearns was educated at Cambridge University. She worked in counter terrorism at the Foreign Office, and then as consultant, advising multiple foreign governments in their response to Isis terrorism. This included a spell as the client services director for the strategic communications consultancy Global Influence.

After leaving the foreign office, Kearns was involved for three months helping with the safety of refugees fleeing to the Greek island of Lesbos.

Kearns had admitting being a former Labour voter, who supported the Conservatives for the first time just a few years ago, in the 2015 General Election. She sees herself as a social liberal.

Seen as an ambitious MP, Kearns was reported in the media as being the ring leader behind the so called ‘pork pie plot’ (named in relation to her constituency) of MPs elected in 2019 who were hostile to prime minister, Boris Johnson over ‘partygate’.

She is the Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Groups on Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Farming, and Geographically Protected Foods. She is a member of the All Party Parliamentary Groups on Syria, Jordon, the Kurdistan Region in Iraq, and the Dairy Industry.