Matt Hancock paid £320K for I’m a Celebrity appearanceon January 26, 2023 at 9:51 pm

Former Health Secretary Matt Hancock was paid £320,000 for taking part in ITV’s I’m a Celebrity reality show.

The West Suffolk MP remains suspended from the Conservative Party for taking time off from his parliamentary duties to appear on the show.

Mr Hancock said he donated £10,000 to charity from the fee, revealed on the register of MPs’ financial interests.

The register also shows former Prime Minister Boris Johnson was paid £510,000 as an advance for his memoir.

It follows the announcement by publishers HarperCollins earlier this month that they had acquired the rights to what was described as a prime ministerial memoir “like no other”.

Mr Johnson has recorded approximately 10 hours work on the novel in the MPs register.

Mr Hancock also received £48,000 for his Pandemic Diaries book, which was serialised in the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday.

He has said he went onto I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! to “show what I am like as a person”. Despite public nominations for multiple gruelling trials in the Australian jungle, Mr Hancock came in third on the show behind footballer Jill Scott and actor Owen Warner.

But Mr Hancock has faced criticism from across the political spectrum for going on the show, with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak saying he was “very disappointed” by the move.

A spokesperson for Mr Hancock said: “As well as raising the profile of his dyslexia campaign in front of 11-million viewers, Matt’s donated £10,000 to St Nicholas Hospice in Suffolk and the British Dyslexia Association.”

Earlier this month Mr Hancock declared he had earned £45,000 from appearing on another reality TV show – Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins.

He filmed the Channel 4 show before flying out to the Australian jungle, but it will be screened later this year.

The register of members’ interests shows he joined the cast of Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins during Liz Truss’s short-lived premiership.

He spent 80 hours on the show, which sees celebrities compete against each other in a series of challenging military training exercises, between 24 September and 8 October.

Parliament was in recess from 24 September, and the Conservative Party conference was held in Birmingham from 2 to 5 October.