Jeremy Hunt

He is the eldest son of Admiral Sir Nicholas Hunt, who was then a Commander in the Royal Navy assigned to work for the Director of Naval Plans inside the recently created Ministry of Defence, and his wife Meriel Eve Hunt, Lady Hunt (née Givan; 1937–2022), daughter of Major Henry Cooke Givan.

The Hunt family were landed gentry, of Boreatton, Baschurch, Shropshire.

A cousin was Dame Agnes Hunt, pioneer of orthopaedic nursing.

Through a paternal great-grandmother, Hunt is a descendant of Sir Streynsham Master, a pioneer of the East India Company.

He is also a distant relative of Queen Elizabeth II and British Union of Fascists leader Sir Oswald Mosley.

His father worked in NHS management after he retired from the navy and his mother was a nurse in the 1950s and 60s.

Hunt was educated at Charterhouse where he was Head of School.

He then read philosophy, politics and economics at Magdalen College, Oxford, and took a first class honours Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree.

He became involved in Conservative politics while at university, where David Cameron and Boris Johnson were contemporaries.

Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (born 1 November 1966) is a British politician serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer since 2022.

Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt was born on 1 November 1966 in Lambeth Hospital, Kennington, and raised in Shere, Surrey.

He was active in the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA) and was elected to serve as president in 1987.

Following university, Hunt worked for two years as a management consultant at OC&C Strategy Consultants and then became an English language teacher in Japan.

On his return to Britain, he tried his hand at a number of different entrepreneurial business ventures, with three failed start-ups including an attempt to export marmalade to Japan.

Hunt had been interested in creating a 'guide to help people who want to study rather than just travel abroad' and, together with Elms, founded a company known as Hotcourses in the 1990s, a major client of which is the British Council.

In 1991, Hunt co-founded a public relations agency named Profile PR specialising in IT with Mike Elms, a childhood friend.

Hunt and Elms later sold their interest in Profile PR to concentrate on directory publishing.

A member of the Conservative Party, he has been Member of Parliament (MP) for South West Surrey since 2005.

The son of a senior officer in the Royal Navy, Hunt was born in Kennington and studied philosophy, politics and economics at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was President of the Oxford University Conservative Association.

He was first elected to the House of Commons in 2005 and was promoted to the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Minister for Disabled People and later as Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

In the 2005 general election, Hunt was elected to represent the constituency of South West Surrey with a majority of 5,711.

After supporting David Cameron's bid for leadership of the Conservative Party, he was appointed Shadow Minister for Disabled People in December 2005.

In the same year, he was a co-author of a policy pamphlet Direct Democracy: An Agenda For A New Model Party which included statements supporting denationalising the NHS and suggested replacing it with "a new system of health provision in which people would pay money into personal health accounts, which they could then use to shop around for care from public and private providers. Those who could not afford to save enough would be funded by the state".

Hunt later denied that the policy pamphlet expresses his views.

In David Cameron's reshuffle of 2 July 2007, Hunt joined the Shadow cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

Hunt stood down as director of the company in 2009; however, he still retained 48% of the shares in the company, which were held in a blind trust before Hotcourses was sold in January 2017 for over £30 million to Australian education organisation IDP Education.

He personally gained over £14 million from the sale and in doing so became the richest member of Theresa May's Cabinet.

In 2009, Hunt was investigated by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.

The commissioner found: "Mr Hunt was in breach of the rules in not reducing his claims on the Additional Costs Allowance in that period to take full account of his agent's living costs. As a result, public funds provided a benefit to the constituency agent ... Mr Hunt received no real financial benefit from the arrangement and that the error was caused by his misinterpretation of the rules."

He previously served in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport from 2010 to 2012, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care from 2012 to 2018 and Foreign Secretary from 2018 to 2019.

Hunt served in the coalition government as Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport from 2010 to 2012, where he led the drive for local TV, resulting in Ofcom awarding local TV broadcasting licences in respect of several cities and towns.

Hunt also oversaw the 2012 London Olympics, which received widespread acclaim.

His previous business interests mean that he is one of the UK's richest politicians.

Hunt served as Secretary of State for Health, later Health and Social Care, from 2012 to 2018.

He served under both the Cameron premiership and May premiership and became the longest-serving health secretary in British political history.

During his tenure, Hunt oversaw the imposition of a controversial new junior doctors' contract in England after a dispute in which junior doctors undertook multiple strikes; the first such industrial action for 40 years.

Following the resignation of Boris Johnson as foreign secretary over the Chequers Agreement, Hunt was appointed Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in July 2018.

He was a candidate for the Conservative Party leadership election in 2019, finishing second to Johnson, and resigned as Foreign Secretary following Johnson's appointment as prime minister.

He served as Chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee from 2020 to 2022, a prominent role due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Following Johnson's resignation in July 2022, Hunt launched a second Conservative leadership bid, but was eliminated in the first ballot of Conservative MPs. On 14 October 2022, Hunt was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer by Liz Truss, following the dismissal of Kwasi Kwarteng, and retained his role as chancellor in Rishi Sunak's ministry following Truss's resignation.