page_title: Philip Hammond
section_title: Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (2014–2016)
hierarchical_section_title: Philip Hammond / In government / Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (2014–2016)
caption_attribution_description: Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond welcomes President of China, Xi Jinping to London, 19 October 2015.
context_page_description: Philip Hammond is a British former Conservative Party politician who was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2016 to 2019 under Prime Minister Theresa May. He was the Member of Parliament for Runnymede and Weybridge from 1997 to 2019. Hammond had the Conservative whip removed in September 2019 for voting against Boris Johnson's government and subsequently sat as an independent MP, though he remains a member of the party. On 5 November 2019 he announced he would not stand for re-election in the December general election.
  Hammond was born in Epping, Essex, and studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at University College, Oxford. He worked from 1984 as a company director at Castlemead Ltd – a healthcare and nursing company. From 1995 to 1997 he acted as an adviser to the government of Malawi before his election to Parliament. He served in the Shadow Cabinets of Michael Howard and David Cameron as Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from 2005 to 2007 and Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 2005 and from 2007 to 2010.
  After the formation of the Coalition Government in May 2010, he was appointed Secretary of State for Transport and was sworn of the Privy Council.
context_section_description: On 15 July 2014, Hammond was appointed Foreign
  and Commonwealth Secretary. Newspapers highlighted his "Eurosceptic" credentials, and his confidence that Britain could "get a deal" on reforming the European Union. He said that he would vote in a putative referendum for a British exit from the European Union unless there were changes in the relationship, but following David Cameron's renegotiation, he supported the Remain campaign.
  In August 2014, Hammond said he was surprised at the sudden resignation of Sayeeda Warsi, Baroness Warsi, who wrote of "great unease" under his leadership of the Foreign office.
  In March 2015, Hammond stated that Britain would support the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen "in every practical way short of engaging in combat." He also told Parliament that the Saudi-led coalition had complied with humanitarian law. This statement was later corrected by the Foreign Office as, according to the Foreign Office, he should have said: "Looking at all the information available to us, we have been unable to assess that there has been a breach of International Humanitarian Law by the Saudi-led coalition". As a result of these discrepancies, Labour MP Ann Clwyd asked the Commons Speaker John Bercow to refer the incident to the relevant parliamentary authority so that they can decide whether Hammond deliberately misled the MPs or if it was an honest mistake.
  
  In March 2015, speaking as the minister responsible for the intelligence agencies, he suggested that terror "apologists" must share blame in terrorist acts, saying "But a huge burden of responsibility also lies with those who act as apologists for them."
  On 8 July 2015, Hammond condemned the defeat by Russia at the UN Security Council of his four-page draft resolution S/2015/508, which would have applied the genocide label to the Srebrenica massacre of Muslim Bosniaks in 1995. Angola, China, Nigeria and Venezuela abstained, while the draft had been proposed by Jordan, Lithuania, Malaysia, New Zealand, the UK and the US. The Russian ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, criticised the British wording as "confrontational and politically-motivated", arguing that it unfairly singled out Bosnian Serbs for committing war crimes in a conflict in which all three ethnic groups were the victims of atrocities. Hammond stated that: "We are disappointed that our resolution to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Srebrenica was vetoed today."
  On 14 July 2015, after several years of on-again-off-again negotiations, the P5+1 reached agreement with Iran over the Nuclear program of Iran. Hammond was present in Vienna as the UK representative for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action disclosure ceremony. Hammond presented the deal in Commons the next day, and was in Jerusalem for a joint press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu, which was described as "tense".
  Hammond described the United Nations findings regarding the detention of Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London on 6 February 2016 as "ridiculous". Mads Andenæs commented, "When countries respond in this way, they damage the respect for the rule of law and the United Nations."
  In October 2015, Justice Secretary Michael Gove cancelled a £5.9 million contract to provide services for prisons in the Saudi Arabia, saying "the British government should not be assisting a regime that uses beheadings, stoning, crucifixions and lashings as forms of punishment." Foreign Secretary Hammond accused Gove of "naivety".
  In November 2015, Hammond was criticised for accepting a watch worth £1,950 from a Saudi businessman called Sheikh Marei Mubarak Mahfouz bin Mahfouz. The watch was given as a gift after the unveiling of a statue of the Queen to mark the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta. Ministers are not allowed to accept gifts worth more than £140 but Hammond claims he was advised that the event was a constituency one, not a ministerial one, and therefore the rules for ministers did not apply to him on that day. Labour MP John Mann was among those who criticised Hammond. "What on earth was he doing?" Mann asked
caption: Hammond welcoming president of China and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Xi Jinping to London, 19 October 2015
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