*UNDER CONSTRUCTION* Signal-boosting #ToryBritain truths to the nation. Helping YOU be part of the fightback.
Tory MP for: South West Surrey (SE England)
First elected: 2005
2017 majority over National Health Action Party: 21,590 (35.7%)
Seat at-risk ranking: 261st (out of 317 Tory MPs)
Cabinet roles:
[Wikipedia entry on Jeremy Hunt]
[Wikipedia entry on South West Surrey constituency]
From the Daily Mirror: Tory leadership contender Jeremy Hunt changed his position on a redevelopment in his constituency and lobbied on behalf of a businessman who later gave £10,000 to his leadership campaign.
From The Independent: Conservative leadership contender Jeremy Hunt would boost defence spending by £15bn – a massive 25 per cent increase to military budgets – if he makes it into 10 Downing Street.
From ITV News: Jeremy Hunt has said Britain would consider joining the US in military action against Iran.
Tensions between the US and Iran have increased in recent weeks after the downing of an American drone and claims by Washington that Tehran was behind attacks on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf.
The Foreign Secretary’s comments came as his department minister Andrew Murrison held talks with the Tehran government at the weekend where he said he was “clear” about the UK’s concerns over Iran’s activities.
While campaigning in Scotland for the Tory leadership Mr Hunt said Britain would weigh up military intervention in Iran on a “case-by-case basis”.
“We will stand by the United States as our strongest ally but of course we have to consider any requests for military support on a case-by-case basis,” he told the Daily Mail.
From The Guardian: British arms sales to Saudi Arabia have been ruled unlawful by the court of appeal in a critical judgment that also accused ministers of ignoring whether airstrikes that killed civilians in Yemen broke humanitarian law.
Three judges said that a decision made in secret in 2016 had led them to decide that Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt and Liam Fox and other key ministers had illegally signed off on arms exports without properly assessing the risk to civilians.
Sir Terence Etherton, the master of the rolls, said on Tuesday that ministers had “made no concluded assessments of whether the Saudi-led coalition had committed violations of international humanitarian law in the past, during the Yemen conflict, and made no attempt to do so”.
From LBC: A GP has called Jeremy Hunt‘s LBC phone-in to urge him to pull out of the Conservative Leadership Contest as no-one who worked in the NHS would ever vote for him.
Mr Hunt was Health Secretary for nearly six years and oversaw a number of Junior Doctors strikes.
Naomi, a GP from Hendon, labelled him the “most hated Health Secretary” she could remember and insisted he would never get the support of medical workers.
From The Independent: Jeremy Hunt has sided with Donald Trump over his attacks on Sadiq Khan, despite the US president endorsing the racist term “Londonistan”.
From LBC: Jeremy Hunt wanted the BBC to cover the cost of TV licences for over-75s.
The BBC has taken the heavily-criticised decision to scrap free TV licences for pensioners, affecting 3.7m people. More than 250,000 people have now signed a petition demanding the elderly do not have to pay the £154.50 annual fee to watch television.
The BBC says that if it had to find the £750m shortfall elsewhere, it would have to cut four television channels and numerous local radio stations.
The man who first came up with the idea to make the BBC cover the cost of the free TV licences is Jeremy Hunt. Back in 2010, Mr Hunt was the Culture Secretary and in charge of negotiating the BBC’s new funding settlement.
LBC’s Political Editor Theo Usherwood has unearthed a report from the time by MPs, which revealed that at the start of the negotiations, Mr Hunt wanted to force the BBC to cover the cost of free TV licences for those aged 75 and over.
From The Labour Party on Facebook: Jeremy Hunt is now the longest serving Health Secretary ever. Here’s a suitable commemorative video from the Labour Party.
5 years and 273 days ago, Jeremy Hunt became Health Secretary – that makes him the longest running Health Secretary in British history.We thought we’d mark the occasion by compiling just a few of his best bits…
Posted by The Labour Party on Sunday, June 3, 2018
From Nursing Notes: Jeremy Hunt, Tory Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, walked out of parliament only seconds before he was due to answer questions over the Learning Disabilities Mortality Review.
Barbara Keeley, Shadow Minister for Mental Health and Social Care, tabled the urgent question for Jeremy Hunt to make a statement on key concerns raised in the Learning Disabilities Mortality Review that was published earlier this month.
The Learning Disabilities Mortality Review (LeDeR) programme was established to support local areas to review the deaths of people with learning disabilities, identify learning from those deaths, and take forward the learning into service improvement initiatives.
The investigation looked at specific health inequalities and the barriers that prevent people with learning difficulties from accessing appropriate healthcare services.
The report provides 189 learning points or recommendations for service improvement of which the report identities Inter-agency collaboration and communication, awareness of the needs of people with learning disabilities and the understanding and application of the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) and the most significant.
From The Guardian: Nine cabinet ministers, including the prime minister, are making more than £10,000 a year by acting as landlords, a Guardian analysis has found.
Following Jeremy Hunt’s failure to declare the purchase of seven luxury flats that he subsequently rented out, an analysis of the parliamentary register of MPs’ interests shows eight other members of the cabinet own property that is rented out for a five-figure annual sum.
The health secretary was forced in to an embarrassing apology on Friday after it emerged that he had failed to declare a business interest with both Companies House and the parliamentary register of MPs’ interests.
Hunt has amended the register, which now shows that he has a half share of a holiday home in Italy, a half share in an office building in Hammersmith and seven recently acquired apartments in Southampton.
Theresa May and Philip Hammond, who both live in Downing Street, rent out their personal homes in central London. Communities and housing secretary Sajid Javid also rents out property, while Chris Grayling, the transport secretary, rents out two properties, according to the register
The foreign secretary Boris Johnson, the international trade secretary Liam Fox, the minister without portfolio Brandon Lewis – who is also the Conservative party chairman – and the Welsh minister Alun Cairns also own and rent out a property, according to the register.
From Daily Mirror: Hospitals have been ordered to postpone all non-emergency surgery until the end of January as the NHS is gripped by a winter crisis.
From The Poke: Jeremy Hunt’s tweet about “moving to the next stage” for the NHS was retweeted 22 times. A doctor telling Hunt exactly what she thought of his tweet has been retweeted over 6,000 times.
From The Independent: Legal action is being taken against Jeremy Hunt and the Department of Health over their proposals to restructure the NHS into a public/private enterprise, which critics say is based upon the US private health insurance-based system.
[Read article on Independent website…]
From Channel 4 News: The Tory health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has been forced to re-write parliamentary records after making a false claim about mental health.
Speaking on World Mental Health Day, he told MPs: “We’ve got 30,000 more people working in mental health today than we had when [Labour] left office.”
He repeated this again, saying: “We have 30,000 more professionals working in mental health than when my Government came into office.”
But when questioned by FactCheck, the Department for Health admitted that Mr Hunt’s figure includes all professionally qualified clinical NHS staff in England – not just those working in mental health.
From The Independent: Jeremy Hunt co-authored a policy pamphlet that called for the NHS to be replaced by an insurance system.