Background
She is the daughter of former Conservative Member of Parliament Tim Brinton and the cousin of Mary Stocks, Baroness Stocks.
politician Member of the House of Lords
She is the daughter of former Conservative Member of Parliament Tim Brinton and the cousin of Mary Stocks, Baroness Stocks.
Brinton was educated at Benenden School and studied stage management at the Central School of Speech and Drama before eventually receiving her degree in English literature from Churchill College, Cambridge in 1981. In 2003, Brinton was awarded an honorary Doctor of Philosophy for her contribution to education, skills and learning by Anglia Ruskin University.
In November 2010 she was nominated to the House of Lords, taking her place on 10 February 2011 as Baroness Brinton, of Kenardington in the County of Kent. In November 2013, she was made a Fellow of Birkbeck, University of London. She is Patron of Christian Blind Mission United Kingdom, Trustee of the United Kingdom Committee of United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, a Trustee of the Ufi Charitable Trust, and a Director of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Limited.
Beginning her career in the mid 1970s at the British Broadcasting Corporation as a television floor manager, working on programmes including Playschool, Grandstand and Doctor Who, she became a Cambridgeshire County Councillor in 1993 and contested the parliamentary seat of South East Cambridgeshire at the 1997 and 2001 general elections.
Baroness Brinton was Bursar of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, from 1992 to 1997, and Selwyn College, Cambridge, from 1997 to 2002.
From 1999 to 2004, Baroness Brinton chaired the Cambridgeshire Learning and Skills Council. She contested the Watford constituency at the 2005 and 2010 General Elections coming second to Labour and the Conservatives respectively.
She is a non-executive director of the Ufi Charitable Trust, a charity giving grants in the vocational educational technology sector. She also chairs the Liberal Democrat Diversity Engagement Group and has a particular interest in increasing the number of women, black, Asian, and minority ethnic MPs.
In 2014, Baroness Brinton was elected as the President of the Liberal Democrats, defeating Daisy Cooper and Liz Lynne, and took up her position on 1 January 2015.
Baroness Brinton is a member of the Liberal Democrat Federal Policy Committee and Vice Chair of the Federal Conference Committee. Baroness Brinton was a member of the All Party Stalking Inquiry of 2011.