Tory Veterans Minister took time out on Armistice Day to film reality TV show
Veterans Minister Johnny Mercer took time out to film a reality TV show on Armistice Day last year, the Sunday Mirror can reveal.
The top Tory, who introduced Rishi Sunak ’s speech at this year’s Tory Party Conference, was paid to film a pilot for Channel 4 Documentary series Banged Up in November 2022. It raises questions for the under fire PM over why a cabinet minister was given permission to take time off for a paid job, worth up to £60,000.
Mr Sunak appointed Mr Mercer to his cabinet just weeks earlier on October 25 - and Mr Mercer’s department was due to launch a major new policy on one of his filming days. The Office For Veterans Affairs was set to unveil a National Veterans Survey, the first of its kind, on 10 November.
It’s understood a tweet announcing the new policy featured a pre-recorded video of Mr Mercer. Instead of cancelling the agreed appearance and returning his fee when he was made a minister, Mr Mercer spent days ‘behind bars’ at a simulated prison in Shrewsbury.
The Veterans Minister was shown smoking a smuggled cigarette (Shine TV)He spent time with ex-convicts who agreed to join him in prison to give him a flavour of what life inside is like. Mr Mercer declared a payment of £9,840 to Parliament for “filming a TV programme” a few days before filming is understood to have begun - adding the work would take up to 32 hours.
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And in June this year, he declared a further £49,200 “broadcast fee for filming already undertaken”. The documentary series was broadcast last month , racking up more than a million viewers. Mr Mercer would not confirm the payments, which were made via his talent agency Cloud 9 Management, relate to Banged Up, and declined to comment on this story.
The Cabinet Office, under which Mr Mercer’s Office for Veterans Affairs sits, declined to comment on the story.
Ministers are not normally allowed to accept external employment once appointed to a government role, but are allowed to receive payments for work carried out prior to taking office - such as book royalties. There is however no suggestion of any wrongdoing on his part.
But that would not apply here, as the work was carried out after he took office. At the same time as he was filming Banged Up, Mr Mercer’s former ministerial colleague Matt Hancock was under fire for appearing on ITV ’s I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here.
While Mr Mercer wasn’t forced to eat exotic animals’ body parts during his stay at ‘HMP Shrewsbury’, he was shown smoking a roll-up cigarette which had been smuggled into the prison in another inmate’s anus. Mr Mercer is shown leaving the prison during the day after at least one night inside, alongside a voiceover which said: "Needing to return to parliamentary duties, Johnny Mercer is being released from HMP Shrewsbury".
Parliament was not sitting at the time the programme was recorded. But it’s understood Mr Mercer left the prison on 11 November in order to spend the evening at rehearsals for the Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall, to take place the following day.
The end titles of the programmes he features in read: "MP Johnny Mercer's story was filmed at a separate time to the other stories in this film. He committed to taking part prior to his appointment as a Cabinet Minister."
A tweet sent by Mr Mercer on 11 November lists his “7 day highlights” from the preceding week - but while it lists interventions on road conditions and subsidised bus fares, it doesn’t mention spending 32 hours filming a reality TV show. The tweet is accompanied by a photo of Mr Mercer planting a remembrance cross in Parliament for war dead from his Plymouth constituency, taken on November 7th.
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