Patricia Hewitt

The Right Honourable Patricia Hewitt
Official portrait, 2006
Secretary of State for Health
In office 6 May 2005 – 28 June 2007
Prime Minister	Tony Blair
Preceded by	John Reid
Succeeded by	Alan Johnson
Secretary of State for Trade and Industry President of the Board of Trade
In office 8 June 2001 – 6 May 2005
Prime Minister	Tony Blair
Preceded by	Stephen Byers
Succeeded by	Alan Johnson
Minister for Women
In office 8 June 2001 – 6 May 2005
Prime Minister	Tony Blair
Preceded by	The Baroness Jay of Paddington
Succeeded by	Tessa Jowell
Economic Secretary to the Treasury
In office 27 July 1998 – 17 May 1999
Prime Minister	Tony Blair
Preceded by	Helen Liddell
Succeeded by	Melanie Johnson
Member of Parliament for Leicester West
In office 1 May 1997 – 12 April 2010
Preceded by	Greville Janner
Succeeded by	Liz Kendall
Personal details
Born	Patricia Hope Hewitt (1948-12-02) 2 December 1948 (age 76) Canberra, Australia
Political party	Labour
Spouse(s)	David Gibson-Watt (1970–1978) Bill Birtles (1981–2020†)
Children	2
Relatives	Lenox Hewitt (father)
Alma mater	Australian National University Newnham College, Cambridge

Patricia Hope Hewitt (born 2 December 1948) is a British government adviser and former politician, who was the Secretary of State for Health from 2005 to 2007. A member of the Labour Party, she had previously been the 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. She was even 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 on the Channel 4 Dispatches programme.

She is a former school governor at the Kentish Town Primary School.

In November 2022, British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, announced that Hewitt would serve in an advisory role to the then Conservative Government.