How much did Matt Hancock earn on I’m a Celebrity 2022? What is his MP salary UK, net worth explained

Former Conservative Health Secretary Matt Hancock‘s I’m a Celebrity Get Me out Of Here! adventure has come to an end after three weeks.

The suspended MP has faced a series of gruelling challenges since joining the cast of the ITV show on 9 November. While he has faced more Bushtucker trials than any other contestant, he finished in third on the series after making it to the final on 27 November.

At the same time, the I’m a Celeb 2022 producers have come in for major criticism for keeping Hancock on the primetime programme. Blamed for the UK’s high death rate during the Covid pandemic and reviled for his affair with aide Gina Coladangelo, there have been calls from campaigners and the wider public for him to be removed from the jungle.

There is also controversy over the fact that Hancock has been more than 10,000 miles away from his constituents in West Suffolk for almost a month. He’s been unavailable to them despite the UK being in its worst cost of living crisis since the 1970s, as well as a severe energy crisis.

In a column for The Sun, Hancock said being on the show would help him to boost public understanding of politics and raise the profile of dyslexia - a learning difficulty he has himself been diagnosed with. However, he only flagged the condition three times during his time on the flagship show.

Despite being in Australia, the sitting MP has still been paid his taxpayer-funded salary for ‘representing’ his constituents in Parliament. So, how much is this salary - and how much did Hancock earn in the jungle? Here’s what you need to know.

What is an MPs’ salary in the UK?

MPs receive an annual salary for serving their constituents in Parliament. As of 1 April 2022, their basic pay sat at £84,144 (£7,012 per month).

They also receive expenses to cover any costs they incur from running their office (e.g. the cost of pens and paper), employing staff (such as caseworkers), and travelling between Westminster and their constituency.

As NationalWorld’s part-time Parliament investigation showed, many MPs serving in the House of Commons also supplement their incomes with external work. For example, some of them earn a salary for providing consultancy services to the private sector, or giving speeches at private events.

This additional work can be extremely lucrative, as shown by the £30,000 Sajid Javid recently received for giving a two-hour speech to HSBC.

How much did Matt Hancock earn on I’m a Celebrity?

Matt Hancock has been in Australia since 2 November, meaning his constituents have been deprived of the full service an MP should provide since 1 November (when his long-haul flight took off from the UK). He is likely to have pocketed around £230 of taxpayer’s money just for making this journey to Australia.

NationalWorld has created a ticker showing exactly how much salary he has received during his I’m a Celeb adventure. We’ve included the days he spent in Australia before the cameras started rolling, as well as an extra day after the final given he will not be back in the UK until at least Tuesday (29 November).

Alongside his MP’s salary, Hancock will take home an appearance fee from I’m a Celebrity. While the exact figure is not publicly known, some have suggested it could be as high as £350,000.

The West Suffolk MP says he will declare in full the appearance fee he receives for appearing on the ITV show via the register of members’ interests. He also says he will use it to make a donation to the St Nicholas Hospice in Suffolk - although he hasn’t specified whether this donation will consist of some or all of his appearance fee.

What is Matt Hancock’s net worth?

The 44-year-old politician has spent most of his adult life in politics. He worked at his family’s software firm and then as an economist at the Bank of England after graduating from Oxford and then Cambridge.

In 2005, the then-Shadow Chancellor George Osborne hired him as an economic advisor before promoting him to chief of staff. And in 2010, he became the Conservative MP for West Suffolk - a constituency that includes the towns of Newmarket and Haverhill.

Given he has done little outside of politics, Hancock’s net worth is hard to estimate. He owned a North London home with his ex-wife Martha Hancock, which is likely to have been worth more than £750,000. His constituency home in Suffolk is also likely to be worth at least £500,000.

While Health Secretary between 2018 and 2021 he earnt more than £65,000 a year on top of the £80,000-plus he was getting as an MP. When he was sacked by Boris Johnson for breaking Covid rules by having an affair with his aide Gina Coladangelo, he was entitled to a £16,000 golden goodbye.

Since departing from the Cabinet, he has earnt £9,400 from penning newspaper articles for The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail. He also got £2,000 for hosting a show on LBC. Other engagements earned him just under £3,000.

All of these earnings, which have been declared on his Parliamentary register of member’s interests, have come on top of his salary for being a member of Parliament.