Patricia Hope Hewitt (born 2 December 1948) is an Australian-born British government adviser and former politician who served as Secretary of State for Health from 2005 to 2007. A member of the Labour Party, she previously served as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry from 2001 to 2005.
Hewitt's political career began in the 1970s as a high-profile left-winger and supporter of Tony Benn, even being classified by MI5 as an alleged communist sympathiser. After nine years as General Secretary of the National Council for Civil Liberties, she became press secretary to Neil Kinnock, whom she assisted in the modernisation of the Labour Party. In 1997, she became the first female MP for Leicester West, a safe Labour seat, in the East Midlands which she represented for thirteen years.
In 2001, she joined Blair's cabinet, the first of the 1997 intake of MPs to do so, as President of the Board of Trade and Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, before becoming Health Secretary in 2005. During her tenure, the ban on smoking in public places became legally enforceable. In March 2010, Hewitt was suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party over the question of political lobbying irregularities, alleged by the Channel 4 Dispatches programme.
In November 2022, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt announced that Hewitt would serve in an advisory role to the government.
Early life
Born in Canberra, Australia, she is the daughter of Sir Lenox Hewitt (1917–2020), a leading civil servant (Secretary of the Australian Prime Minister's Department, and later chairman of Qantas), and Lady (Hope) Hewitt (1915–2011). She was educated at Canberra Church of England Girls' Grammar School and the Australian National University. She then studied for degrees in English Literature at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she graduated BA (later promoted to MA). She became a visiting fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, and was awarded an honorary Oxford MA. She speaks French and is a keen gardener.
In 1970, Hewitt married David Julian Gibson-Watt, second son of David Gibson Watt, Conservative MP for Hereford, and Diana Hambro. The couple divorced in 1978. Originally a Conservative, by the time of her divorce she had moved to the left, becoming a committed feminist. MI5 classified her a "Communist sympathiser" in the 1970s because of her relationship with William (Bill) Jack Birtles, a radical lawyer. In 1981, she married Birtles in Camden; they have a daughter (born September 1986) and a son (born February 1988). In 1971, she became Age Concern's Press and Public Relations Officer, before joining the National Council for Civil Liberties (now Liberty), initially as a women's rights officer in 1973, and for nine years from 1974 as the general secretary.
In 1990, the Council of Europe ruled MI5 surveillance of both Hewitt and the NCCL legal officer, Harriet Harman, had breached the European Convention of Human Rights. She is a former school governor at the Kentish Town Primary School.
Pre-Parliamentary career
Hewitt joined the Labour Party in the 1970, and was initially a follower of Tony Benn; she publicly condemned those left-wing MPs who abstained in the deputy leadership election of 1981, giving Denis Healey a narrow victory. She was selected as the Labour candidate in Leicester East constituency at the 1983 general election following the defection of the sitting Labour MP Tom Bradley to the Social Democratic Party. Bradley stood for the SDP at the election, but it was the Conservative candidate Peter Bruinvels who defeated Hewitt, who came second, by just 933 votes.
Following her defeat in Leicester, she became press secretary to the Leader of the Opposition Neil Kinnock. In this role she was a key player in the first stages of the 'modernisation' of the Labour Party, and along with Clive Hollick, helped set up the Institute for Public Policy Research and was its deputy director 1989–1994.
Following Labour's defeat in 1992, Hewitt was asked by the new Labour Leader, John Smith, to help establish the Commission on Social Justice, of which she became deputy chair. She became head of research with Andersen Consulting, remaining in the post during the period 1994–1997. Liam Byrne worked for her at Andersen Consulting.