[2] Burrowes contested the safe Labour seat of Edmonton at the 2001 general election achieving a 1.0 swing away from sitting MP Andy Love who won by a majority of 9,772.

He was elected MP for Enfield Southgate in May 2005, defeating Minister of State for Education and Skills Stephen Twigg with a majority of 1,747 votes and a swing of 8.7%.

[4] Based on the questions he asks, his main political topics of interest are Justice, Health, Home Department, Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, International Development,[5] though he includes family policy, drugs and alcohol policy and voluntary sector, umbilical cord blood banking, treatment and research in his Parliament biography.

[6] In 2005-6 he contributed to debates on violent crime, fatherhood, criminal legal aid, council tax revaluation and equalities.

[5] During the Conservative Party's social justice policy review headed by Iain Duncan Smith, Burrowes chaired the committee looking into addiction.

In 2013, he called for the Attorney General to review the sentence passed on former Cabinet Minister Chris Huhne which he regarded as too lenient.

He was also an officer of the following APPGs – Cyprus, Human Trafficking, Religious Education, Sickle Cell and Thalassaemia, Refugees and Ending Homelessness.

[15] Burrowes became a "major focal point of the high profile campaign to stop computer hacker Gary McKinnon," a constituent, being extradited to the United States.

[17] In February 2015 Burrowes was embarrassed to find himself canvassing for the 2015 United Kingdom general election on doorsteps in the home street of neighbouring MP Andrew Love after he and his campaign team accidentally strayed into the wrong constituency.

[24] In May 2021 Burrowes co-authored an essay entitled "Family Matters – the Case for Strengthening Families" with Fiona Bruce the then-MP for Congleton, for inclusion in Common Sense: Conservative Thinking for a Post-Liberal Age published by the Common Sense Group, an informal group of Conservative MPs.