South East Cambridgeshire was a constituency[n 1] represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament from 2015 to 2024 by Lucy Frazer, a member of the Conservative Party who has served as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport from 2023 to 2024.

As a result, the seat was abolished for the 2024 general election, with the majority of the electorate being included in the new constituency of Ely and East Cambridgeshire.

However, during the four years he served South East Cambridgeshire, he was a Tory 'wet' backbencher, having been sacked by Thatcher for famously remarking during the 1983 election that "Landslides don't on the whole produce successful governments".

Workless claimants were in November 2012 significantly lower than the national average of 3.8%, at 1.4% of the population based on a statistical compilation by The Guardian.

Ely, the largest community, has cathedral city status, and there are many smaller settlements including Burwell, Fulbourn, Isleham, Linton, Milton, Soham and Waterbeach.