Johnny Mercer

Mercer passed the All Arms Commando Course and served mostly with 29 Commando Regiment Royal Artillery and 3rd Regiment Royal Horse Artillery.

He served three tours in Afghanistan: as a liaison and training officer with Afghan forces; attached to a Special Forces unit; and as a co-ordinator of artillery and air strikes in support of ground operations.

John Luther Mercer (born 17 August 1981) is a British politician and former British Army officer who has served as Minister of State for Veterans’ Affairs since October 2022, having previously held the post from July to September 2022.

John Mercer was born on 17 August 1981, in Dartford, Kent.

The son of a banker and a nurse, he grew up in a strict Baptist family with seven siblings.

Between 1995 and 2000, he was educated at Eastbourne College, a co-educational independent school in Eastbourne in East Sussex.

After completing school, he worked as an intern in the City of London from 2000 to 2002.

Mercer was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery after graduating from Sandhurst, in June 2003 and was promoted to lieutenant in April 2005.

Mercer retired from military service in December 2013 with the rank of captain.

After contacting ex-military Conservative MP Bob Stewart, he was selected as the Conservative Party candidate for Plymouth Moor View two months after leaving the army in February 2014.

Mercer has said he was largely responsible for organising his own campaign "on the cheap".

To raise funds, he worked on building sites and appeared in a Dove shower gel advertisement.

A member of the Conservative Party, Mercer has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Plymouth Moor View since 2015.

In April 2021, after notifying the chief whip of his intention to resign his position as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, he was dismissed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

In July 2022, he was appointed Minister for Veterans’ Affairs at the Cabinet Office – attending Cabinet – following Johnson's announcing his intention to resign as Leader of the Conservative Party.

Mercer was dismissed from the position in September 2022 by Prime Minister Liz Truss.

In October 2022, he was reappointed Minister of State for Veterans' Affairs by Truss's successor Rishi Sunak.

At the 2015 general election, Mercer was elected as MP for Plymouth Moor View, winning with 37.6% of the vote and a majority of 1,026.

Mercer delivered his maiden speech in the House of Commons on 1 June 2015, stating his "main missions" in Parliament to be improving provision for mental health and support for war veterans.

He has been critical of the Iraq Historic Allegations Team.

In the House of Commons he has sat on the Defence Committee, the Defence Sub-Committee (2015–19) and the Health and Social Care Committee (2017–19).

His campaign to get elected as an MP in 2015 was subsequently the subject of a police investigation following allegations that it breached rules on campaign spending.

Mercer admitted to police that his account of expenses had been incorrect, but stated that the errors were minor and his spending had not breached legal limits.

Mercer was opposed to Brexit prior to the 2016 EU referendum.

He later said that the result to leave should be respected.

In June 2017, two years after becoming an MP, Mercer published We Were Warriors: One Soldier's Story of Brutal Combat, a memoir of his upbringing and army service, especially his time in Afghanistan.

Mercer has said publicly that he had not been politically active in his younger years and the first time he voted was for himself when he first ran for office.

He said that he entered politics with a view to improving the care of veterans and felt that he was a Conservative because he regarded the "massive welfare state that saps the ambition and drive of a younger generation" as a problem.

At the snap 2017 general election, Mercer was re-elected with an increased vote share of 51.9% and an increased majority of 5,019.

In July 2018 Mercer appeared in Celebrity Hunted, a Channel 4 television programme where participants go on the run and images are released of them so people can try to track them down.

While taking part in the programme he missed the meeting of the Health and Social Care Committee, of which he was a member, shortly before Parliament rose for the summer recess.

Mercer defended his decision, stating that he had used his position to raise money for charity and had brought his parliamentary roles into filming.

In October 2018, Mercer took on a second job working 20 hours a month as a consultant to Crucial Academy for a salary of £85,000 (equivalent to £350 per hour).

The Labour Party parliamentary candidate Charlotte Holloway accused him of neglecting his constituency duties to earn a "staggering" amount of money.

Mercer said the accusation "smacked of political jealousy".

In an interview with The House magazine in October 2018, Mercer suggested that his values no longer aligned with the current Conservative party leadership and said there would be "absolutely no chance" that he would start as a candidate of the party at this time.

He was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence People and Veterans from July 2019 to April 2021.

In April 2019 the BBC reported that his salary at Crucial Academy was funded by the marketing agent for the failed London Capital and Finance bond scheme, although Crucial Group later denied this.

On 8 May 2019, Mercer announced that he would no longer vote for any laws that Theresa May's cabinet presented before Parliament, (with the exception of Brexit-related legislation) until new laws were implemented which would end the practise of prosecuting British servicemembers who were deployed to Northern Ireland as part of Operation Banner, stating that "these repeated investigations with no new evidence, the macabre spectacle of elderly veterans being dragged back to Northern Ireland to face those who seek to re-fight the conflict through other means without any protection from a Government who sent them almost 50 years ago, is too much".

Mercer has been challenged over his expenses several times.