Joe Robertson is the first MP for Isle of Wight East, and one of the few in Parliament whose interest in health and social care runs through his own family before it ever reached a committee room. His mother was a care worker; his sister and her husband are nurses at the island's hospital.

Joe Paul James Robertson was born in 1984 and grew up in Ryde on the Isle of Wight, attending Ryde School before studying at University College London and qualifying as a family law solicitor, later practising at a Southampton firm. He still lives on the island. That rootedness, and the family connection to the NHS through his mother's care work and his relatives at St Mary's Hospital, gives his politics a direct line into the services he talks about.

He moved from family law into the charity sector as an in house adviser at Dementia UK, negotiating contracts with the NHS, local authorities and other care providers. That is commissioning and procurement experience, not generic advisory work, and it shaped his focus once in Parliament.

His political apprenticeship did not start on the island. He stood for the Conservatives in Erith and Thamesmead in 2019, finishing second but cutting Labour's majority from 10,014 to 3,758. He then returned home, winning Bembridge ward on the Isle of Wight Council in 2021 and leading the Conservative group from 2021 to 2023, before being selected for the newly created Isle of Wight East seat.

He won it on 4 July 2024 with a majority of 3,323, or 9.8 per cent, becoming its first MP. He sits on the Health and Social Care Committee and the Court of Referees, serves as parliamentary private secretary to the shadow culture and transport teams, and is vice chair of the all party group on dementia, having worked through the Bus Services, Courts and Tribunals and Health bill committees. He has rebelled twice in 664 divisions, including on the Tobacco and Vapes Bill.

At 41, with a UCL degree, family roots in island healthcare, the Dementia UK commissioning background and a seat on the Health Committee, Robertson has a more coherent health and social care identity than most new MPs. The harder ground is that the island's real problems, the ferries, NHS access, housing and economic isolation, all need a government cooperation that an opposition backbencher cannot command, and dementia scrutiny is invisible to most voters. Whether his committee work and island advocacy produce improvements islanders can feel will decide whether the first MP for Isle of Wight East builds a lasting career.