Jeremy Hunt is being referred to the parliamentary commissioner for standards after failing to declare the purchase of seven luxury flats in Southampton.
Jon Trickett, the shadow cabinet office minister who made the referral said: “Faith in politics and politicians is at a historic low. Any minister flouting the rules designed to prevent big financial interests corrupting politics must be held to account, especially when that minister’s own government introduced the rules.”
The health and social care secretary, said to have a personal fortune of at least £14m after the sale of an education business, Hotcourses, owns a half share in a company set up with his wife to invest in luxury property. The Cabinet Office said there was no breach of the ministerial code.
Hunt, who has apologised, insists he was told by the Cabinet Office that he did not need to declare the interest until the company started trading. However, it appears he also initially failed to declare his interest to Companies House, which is a criminal offence. The errors have since been corrected.
Hunt’s company bought seven flats in Ocean Village, a redevelopment project on the Southampton waterfront. The 75-acre plot of wharfs, warehouses and shipyards was begun in the 1980s and boasts a yacht marina along with shops, hotels and apartments.
According to the Daily Telegraph, Hunt set up Mare Pond Properties Ltd with his wife, Lucia Guo. But when the registration documents were filed in September 2017 only his wife was named, constituting a breach of regulations.
He also breached the Companies Act, which requires anyone with more than 25% control of a company to be declared “a person with significant control”. The act was introduced by David Cameron’s government in 2015 to tackle money laundering and came into force the following year.
But the referral to parliamentary standards comes because House of Commons regulations require all MPs to register any holding larger than 15% within 28 days. Hunt failed to register for five months. He says the omission was an honest administrative error made by his accountant and since corrected.
In 2012, when he was culture secretary in the coalition government, Hunt got into trouble after emails emerged at the Leveson inquiry showing that behind the scenes he was privately supporting News Corporation’s attempts to take full control of BSkyB.
As culture secretary, he was meant to be acting in an impartial “quasijudicial” way.
He was accused of being a “cheerleader” for the Murdoch empire and of having a cosy relationship with its executives. His special adviser, Adam Smith, was forced to quit over emails revealing the close contacts between Hunt’s office and News Corp while the firm was bidding to take over BSkyB.
The inquiry also revealed dozens of often chatty text messages between Hunt and a News Corp lobbyist, Fred Michel, which caused further embarrassment.
But Hunt survived. In the autumn of that year he was moved to the Department of Health. It was thought his main role there was to steady the ship following two turbulent years of NHS restructuring imposed by his predecessor, Andrew Lansley.
No one, least of all Hunt, imagined he would still be in the job nearly six years later, becoming the longest-serving health secretary in history. Earlier this year, in what was supposed to be a major cabinet reshuffle, Theresa May tried to move him to the business department. But he refused to move and instead picked up extra responsibilities overseeing the social care reform programme.
