Daddy’s big day! Jeremy Hunt’s wife Lucia brings their children out into Downing Street for rare appearance to see him off to the Commons as Chancellor heads to Parliament to deliver a Budget to rescue the UK economy
- Lucia Guo brought them out of No11 as the Chancellor left to deliver his Budget
- Stood outside No12 in their school uniforms as he posed with red ministerial box
Jeremy Hunt’s wife and two of their children made a rare appearance in Downing Street today as the Chancellor left to deliver his Budget.
Lucia Guo brought their son Jack and one of the couple’s two daughters out of No11 to see their father off as he headed for Parliament.
They were standing outside No12 in their school uniforms as he made the obligatory pose with his red ministerial box.
Later they were all spotted in the House of Commons watching the Budget from the public gallery.
Lucia Guo brought their son Jack and one of the couple’s two daughters out of No11 to see their father off as he headed for Parliament.
They were standing outside No12 in their school uniforms as he made the obligatory pose with his red ministerial box.
Mr Hunt has previously called his wife – who is 12 years his junior – his ‘secret weapon’.
The couple met in 2008 and married in 2009, with their solid relationship managing to survive Mr Hunt once saying his Chinese wife was Japanese.
Mr Hunt has previously called his wife – who is 12 years his junior – his ‘secret weapon’.
But she has remained quietly in the shadows with their three children as he rose through the Cabinet ranks as culture secretary and health secretary and foreign secretary, before being parachutes into the Treasury last year to rescue Liz Truss and calm the economy.
Unlike many Westminster marriages, the couple’s mutual affection looks sincere. They met in 2008 when Lucia was a 30-year-old student recruiter at Warwick university – and a client of the Hotcourses online education business which turned Mr Hunt, then aged 41, into a multi-millionaire. They were married within a year.
In 2019, when he ran against Boris Johnson to become Tory leader, Mrs Hunt describes him as an ardent suitor, wooing her with tea and biscuits, asking for her email address and utilising his perks as shadow culture secretary to take her to a ‘freebie’ performance of Othello at the Donmar Warehouse in London.
The Chancellor, the son of Admiral Sir Nicholas Hunt, proposed in impeccable middle class fashion during a country walk close to his parents’ Surrey home.
She told the Mail at the time: ‘He asked me to put my hands in a tree. I said, no, it looked like a fox hole and I thought he’d do some trick on me. He said, there’s something in there for you. It was a ring!’
The couple then flew out together to Mrs Hunt’s home city of Xian so Mr Hunt could ask her father for her hand in marriage, with Lucia translating his nervous request. They married in China.
Hunt headed to the Commons today as he prepared to unveil a ‘back to work’ Budget – with free childcare for under-threes and tax incentives for people to pay into pensions for longer.
Jeremy Hunt briefed the Cabinet on the contents of the Budget this morning, before delivering the statement to the Commons around 12.30pm
The Chancellor posed for the traditional photographs with his red box outside No11 ahead of the keenly-awaited package.
Boosted by a marginally brighter economic outlook, Mr Hunt will announce some big-ticket moves to tackle eye-watering levels of inactivity in the workforce after Covid.
Most parents are expected to get up to 30 hours of funded childcare for one and two-year olds, building on the current provision for pre-schoolers.
A planned rise in the cap on average energy bills next month is also being ditched to ease the pressure on struggling families, while the long-standing freeze on fuel duty is set to be extended.
Despite months of lobbying from MPs and businesses, the Chancellor will push ahead with increasing corporation tax from 19 per cent to 25 per cent and Rishi Sunak’s ‘Superdeduction’ scheme is coming to an end. He will also snub pleas for early income tax cuts as the burden heads towards a postwar high.
However, there will be new tax breaks for firms that invest in the UK, with claims they could be worth up to £11billion a year.
Mr Hunt briefed the Cabinet on the contents of the Budget this morning, before delivering the statement to the Commons around 12.30pm.
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