Jeremy Joseph James Hayes (born 1952 or 1953)[1] is a British barrister and former Conservative politician, who was the MP for Harlow in Essex from 1983 until he failed to be re-elected in 1997.
On the BBC Question Time programme on 9 May 2013, he expressed the view that there was a real danger that the entire legal profession would be placed in the hands of G4S within a couple of years.
For over four years he regularly appeared with Charles Kennedy, Ken Livingstone and Michael Parkinson on a political discussion show on LBC in London.
[7] When the heavy metal group Iron Maiden were having trouble getting permission to play in Beirut, Hayes threw his weight behind them (one member was a constituent).
[9] Hayes also became a panelist on Stephen Nolan's weekend late night show on Fridays on BBC Radio 5 Live, reviewing the newspapers with Mohammed Shafiq, a media commentator on British-Muslim issues.
He acted as lawyer to John Hemming in his 2005 legal bid to challenge postal votes at the 2005 general election and has also defended celebrities and a British soldier in Iraq.
[10] Hayes works at Goldsmith Chambers on whose website he is described as specialising in leading high-profile murder, drugs, rape and fraud cases.
[11] He discontinued the rape prosecution of Liam Allan in December 2017 after it was discovered that the police had withheld tens of thousands of text messages sent by the complainant.
The decision to report the story drew criticism from other newspapers, with Peter Popham writing in The Independent, "One has to ask why Jerry Hayes's gay fling/platonic friendship should be thought to have any bearing on anything besides the emotions of those two people and, arguably, those close to them".