John David Penrose (born 22 June 1964) is a British politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Weston-super-Mare from 2005 until 2024.

[2] Penrose previously served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport from 2010 to 2012 and Lord Commissioner of the Treasury from 2014 to 2016.

Penrose stood as the Conservative candidate in Ealing Southall in the 1997 general election, coming second with 20.8% of the vote behind the incumbent Labour MP Piara Khabra.

[5] At the 2001 general election, Penrose stood in Weston-super-Mare, coming second with 38.7% of the vote behind the incumbent Liberal Democrat MP Brian Cotter.

[6] Penrose served on the Work and Pensions Committee from July 2005 to January 2009, and in 2006 was appointed joint chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Further Education and Lifelong Learning.

In 2006 he was also appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to Oliver Letwin MP and in 2009 was promoted to Shadow Minister for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform.

[19] Penrose came under criticism for voting to change lobbying rules in order to defend his Conservative colleague Owen Paterson, who had been found to have "repeatedly used his privileged position to benefit two companies for whom he was a paid consultant".

[20] The High Court also ruled that the-then Prime Minister Boris Johnson's appointment of Dido Harding, Penrose's wife, to chair the National Institute for Health Protection, overseeing the Test and Trace initiative was illegal; [21] the scheme cost £37bn which was allocated to Serco and other private companies, before it failed in its primary objectives.

[29] In May 2020, Penrose joined the advisory board of the think tank 1828 which has campaigned to scrap the NHS and replace it with a health insurance based system.