Jeremy Hunt is a British Conservative politician. He served as health secretary, during which time he steered the Care Act through Parliament in 2014—a landmark reform requiring the secretary of state to try to treat mental and physical health equally within the NHS. He was Britain's chancellor of the exchequer from 2022 to 2024.
The Care Act did not apply to the Department for Work and Pensions, but its emphasis on parity between mental and physical health had knock-on effects for the benefits system. The Institute for Fiscal Studies found that mental-illness claims account for more than half of the post-pandemic increase in disability benefits. Since the pandemic, Britain has been paying disability and incapacity benefits to a million more claimants, with costs up 45% in real terms—a surge the IFS describes as "largely a UK phenomenon", with no comparable rise in any other European or G7 country. Hunt has acknowledged indirect responsibility for this trend.
Hunt is the author of "Can We Be Great Again? Why a Dangerous World Needs Britain" (2025).
They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy". Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.