The Chancellor’s wife and children made a rare public appearance yesterday as they watched him brandish his red budget box outside Downing Street.
Jeremy Hunt’s wife Lucia stood outside Number 12, joined by their three children Jack, 13, Anna, 11, and Eleanor, nine.
Although they keep their kids relatively out of the spotlight, they did also appear in a similar shoot for last year’s Budget in March.
Tax cuts for millions of working people, a freeze on fuel duty for the 14th year in a row and scrapping the existing tax breaks for wealthy non-doms were just some of the things Hunt announced yesterday.
Dressed in a clean-cut cream matching blazer and skirt, Lucia, 46, could not hide her excitement as she beamed while watching her husband of 15 years hold up his red ministerial box.
Their son was dressed in a smart suit with a blue tie for the occasion, whereas their daughters opted for a more casual look.
Jeremy Hunt’s wife Lucia (second from left) stood outside Number 12, joined by their three children Jack (far left), 13, Anna (third from left), 11, and Eleanor (third from right), nine
Lucia looked smart yesterday, opting for an elegant cream co-ord
Lucia, who is 11 years his junior, was called Hunt’s ‘secret weapon’ during his Conservative Party leadership campaign in 2019
Tax cuts for millions of working people, a freeze on fuel duty for the 14th year in a row and scrapping the existing tax breaks for wealthy non-doms were just some of the things Hunt announced yesterday
The pair met in Warwick at a Hotcourses event in 2008. His future spouse, who was born in Xi’an, China, worked alongside Warwick University to help recruit Chinese students.
Lucia, who is 11 years his junior, has been called Hunt’s ‘secret weapon’ during his Conservative Party leadership campaign in 2019.
Less than a year after they met, Hunt asked Lucia to marry him after they went on a romantic walk on Christmas Eve while visiting his parents in Shere, Surrey.
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,’ she told the Mail.
‘He said, there’s something in there for you. It was a ring!’
They tied the knot in 2009 in China, where he gained the nickname ‘Big Rice’ and said the name comes from her grandmother.
She told the Mail, she said: ‘My grandma found it very hard to say ‘Jeremy’ so she would just call him the ‘big mi’. Mi means ‘rice’, so I call him ‘big rice’.’
Their relationship survived even after he said his Chinese partner was Japanese during a visit to Beijing when he was Foreign Secretary in 2018.
In 2019, when he ran against Boris Johnson to become Tory leader, she described how he wooed 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.
Speaking after the birth of his youngest, Eleanor, in 2014, Hunt praised the NHS and said it was a ‘real thrill’ to see the ‘the very best of the service for the birth of our beautiful daughter.’
‘As for the Hunt family, Lucia is making a good recovery and we are all delighted with our precious little girl even if somewhat terrified of the domestic chaos that awaits,’ he added.
In 2014, Mr Hunt admitted that he feared for the future of his three children who are ‘half Chinese’ – because uncontrolled immigration risks causing ‘tensions’ in Britain.
Their son, Jack, (pictured with his mother) was dressed in a smart suit with a blue tie for the occasion
Dressed in a clean-cut cream matching blazer and skirt, Lucia, 46, could not hide her excitement as she beamed while watching her husband of 15 years hold up his red ministerial box
The family were pictured last March when the Chancellor announced the Budget
Jeremy Hunt and Lucia in 2019, a year after he mistakenly said his Chinese wife was Japanese
He said he was worried that mounting anger against migrants would mean his Chinese wife and their children would face hostility for using the NHS.
He warned at the time that unless the level of immigration was under control, the UK would have to face up to the sort of ‘social divisions’ that had tarnished other countries.
He made his comments in a phone-in programme hosted by Iain Dale on LBC Radio.
‘I’d like to make one general point about immigration,’ he said. ‘My wife is Chinese and she obviously lives with me in London.
‘My children are half Chinese and I do not want them to grow up in a country where people look at immigrants and say it’s difficult for me to access NHS services because of people like you.
‘And that’s why it’s so important to have sensible, balanced, controlled immigration in this country.
‘Because otherwise we’ll have social divisions, we’ll have tensions, which thankfully in this country we’ve avoided for many years unlike other countries.’
After the family moved into Number 11, the Mail’s Richard Eden reported that Hunt’s children get along swimmingly with Sunak’s daughters, Krishna and Anoushka.
‘The children have already started regular playdates with Rishi [Sunak]’s children, as they’re just next door,’ the Chancellor said.
The couple are thought to run a real estate business called Mare Pond Properties Ltd and own seven properties, including a £1.7m townhouse in Pimlico, South London, according to the Evening Standard.