HASLEMERE MP Jeremy Hunt is set to become ‘the richest member of Theresa May’s cabinet’ after the educational listings company he co-founded in 1996, Hotcourses, was sold to an Australian firm.

Hotcourses was acquired for £30.1million this week by IDP Education, a Melbourne-based student placement company - pocketing the Health Secretary and Tory MP for South West Surrey £14.5m for his 48 per cent stake in the firm.

Mr Hunt set up Hotcourses with his childhood friend Mike Elms prior to entering politics but stepped down as a director in 2009 shortly before securing his first cabinet post as Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport.

He is also the first MP to have run their own business prior to becoming Health Secretary – a role he has fulfilled on the cabinet since September 4, 2012.

Mr Hunt said in a statement: “I am incredibly proud to have set up a successful business, even prouder of the current Hotcourses team who have taken it from strength to strength, and intend to use a significant proportion of the proceeds to campaign for causes I believe in when I eventually leave frontline politics.”

Founded as a educational print magazine, Hotcourses has grown to become a fully digital and multinational operation with over 300 employees in offices in the UK, Europe, North America, Asia and Australia.

The company now puts together databases of places to study, and has a contract with the British Council to run the Education UK website, which offers information to overseas students seeking to take courses in Britain.

Discussing his business background and how it has shaped his political ideology in a meeting with the Farnham Hub networking group in 2015, Mr Hunt stated his belief that a low-tax economy is the ultimate way to help businesses flourish.

“To be honest, we’ve got a problem with our entrepreneurial culture if our entrepreneurs are saying to us that we’re only going to start a business up if we have a Government [tax-relief] scheme,” he said.

“These schemes can be great but the success of Britain, the fifth largest economy in the world, has got to be about the animal spirits of our entrepreneurs who want to go out there, take risks and start businesses.

“When I started my own business, there were a whole plethora of schemes available. But in the end what I really wanted is low tax rates for the basic taxes that really matter.

“Things like business rates, VAT, employer’s national insurance are absolute killers for small businesses because those are the bills that you have to pay before you’ve even paid a penny of corporation tax.”