The Tory MP warns the prime minister not to end his role as an ethics adviser
Former government anti-corruption activist John Penrose has called on the government not to “leave a lot of harmful issues hanging”, not replacing Christopher Hyde after the resignation of ethics adviser on Wednesday.
Asked about Lord Hyde’s work as an investigation into the Downing Street apartment, the Weston-Super-Mare Conservative MP told BBC Radio 4’s Today program:
I think one of the reasons why it’s important to have some continuity, why it’s important to have if not an exact replacement, then an effective consistency here is to make sure you don’t leave really harmful issues hanging and that all that is unfulfilled, not just forgotten and lost.
He said of the report in the apartment:
I don’t know how finished it is, I don’t know if there’s anything that still needs to be done on it, or just sitting on a shelf waiting to be published.
But I think the important thing about all these problems is that they don’t go away if you just ignore them. Ethics and integrity don’t work that way, so they will have to put these things to bed, or the only way to draw a line under these things is, frankly, to take them out into the open, and then people can understand and move on.
Welcome to today’s live blog. I will update you throughout the day. Email me at nicola.slawson@theguardian.com or tweet me @Nicola_Slawson if you think I’m missing something or if you have a question.
Updated at 09.26 BST
Linton Crosby, the election guru and businessman, attended Boris Johnson’s meetings at 8:30 a.m. at number 10, which shows that he is more involved in the prime minister’s decision-making than previously thought.
It is known that the Australian political strategist, whose consulting firm represented tobacco and oil and gas interests, helped Johnson remotely with his leadership problems, but his participation in regular meetings shows that he seems to have taken much more. greater role than before.
Crosby runs the CT Group, a company for government affairs, research and studies, and advises political leaders on their election strategy. His return to Johnson’s advice coincided with a shift to the right as the prime minister tried to strengthen his position with this wing of the party and those who elected him in 2019.
Source № 10 confirmed that Crosby attended some of the morning meetings, but insisted that they were political, not official, government.
A government spokesman said:
Linton Crosby is not a civil servant. Any help from the prime minister would be political and in his capacity as leader of the Conservative Party.
Read more from my colleagues Rowena Mason and Aubrey Allegretti here:
Peter Walker
The Conservative candidate in Tiverton and Honiton accused the media of preventing the public from “continuing” from Partygate and twice refused to say that Boris Johnson was honest.
In an interview with the Guardian, Helen Herford acknowledged that the party was facing a very difficult battle to preserve its former super-safe seat and criticized what she called the media’s “permanent return to Partygate”. Asked if she believed Boris Johnson was fundamentally honest, Herford twice declined to say.
Herford, a former head teacher and city councilor in Honiton who now runs a beauty training business, is defending a majority of more than 24,000 won in 2019 by MP Neil Parish, who resigned in April after admitting to watching pornography on your phone in the Municipality. camera.
But the June 23 by-elections, which come on the same day as the Tories are defending another seat in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, are seen as an extremely close race between Herford and Liberal Democrat candidate Richard Ford.
An internal poll by the Liberal Democrats on those who intend to vote on by-elections on Wednesday showed the Conservatives at 46% and the Liberals at 44%.
“I think it’s going to be very cramped and we can’t take anything for granted,” Herford said. “It can be reduced to very small numbers.”
Read more here:
Full story: Johnson has called not to relinquish the role of Lord Hyde
Jamie Grisson
The former government’s anti-corruption activist said it would be “a big mistake” for Boris Johnson to resign as ethics adviser following Lord Hyde’s resignation.
A spokesman for the prime minister said on Thursday that Johnson would not immediately seek a replacement for Hyde, but would instead review the system for implementing the ministerial code.
In a strong letter of resignation published by Downing Street on Thursday, Hyde cited Johnson’s problematic response to the Partygate scandal as one of the reasons for his departure.
But he made it clear that the last straw was Johnson’s request to Geidt to approve a plan to increase tariffs on steel imports, which could violate World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and put the government in violation of international law.
John Penrose, who resigned from his role in fighting corruption last week, said of the position of ethics adviser:
Obviously you can change the role a little, but you should not weaken the role.
If you come up with a revised version as a successor to Lord Geidt, some new format, some new way to deal with the problem, everything is fine. But the question must be how, not whether.
You can’t just pretend it doesn’t matter and there’s no work to be done.
Read more here:
Business Minister Paul Scully said he believed the prime minister was meeting the highest standards required of his office, despite the resignation of Christopher Hyde.
He added that he would feel comfortable without an ethics adviser, as long as there was a “mechanism” to ensure compliance with the standards.
Asked if he could say Boris Johnson maintains high standards, Scully told Sky News:
Yes I can. I think Lord Hyde seems to have resigned from the debate around when the Prime Minister asked him for advice on supporting industries over the next few months.
He added:
As for the Prime Minister’s behavior, he rightly wants to draw a line under the so-called party because people are more worried about the cost of living, what this will mean for their mortgages and bills in the coming days and months.
Asked if he would be comfortable if no one was hired to replace Lord Hyde as Ministerial Adviser, Scully said:
I think it will be convenient for me, as long as there is a mechanism that (provides) the Prime Minister and me as a Minister to comply with the highest standards.
There is a ministerial code there, and we want to make sure that it is respected, because it (enshrines) the principles we all stand for, not only as MPs when we first come to the House, but when we take office as ministers.
Former anti-corruption champion John Penrose said it would be “quite a mistake” to remove the role of ethics adviser following the resignation of Christopher Hyde.
The Conservative MP from Weston-Super-Mare, who himself resigned last week, said of the position of ethics adviser:
Obviously you can change the role a little, but you should not weaken the role.
If you come up with a revised version as a successor to Lord Geidt, some new format, some new way to deal with the problem, everything is fine. But the question must be how, not whether.
You can’t just pretend it doesn’t matter and there’s no work to be done.
Penrose said on BBC Radio 4’s Today program:
I just think that the Prime Minister is currently exaggerating, if I may say so, at his expense with both the voters and the parliamentary party. They need to show that they are serious about it.
This is part of the reset, I would say, which the Prime Minister rightly said he wanted to do after the no-confidence vote last week. Good for him. This will be a good way to be a part of it and move it forward.
A government minister has distanced himself from a Conservative run-off claim that voters still need to trust the Tories after the imprisonment of disgraced former Wakefield MP Imran Ahmad Khan, just as they still trust GPs despite mass crimes. killer Harold Shipman.
When asked by LBC about the comment made by Nadeem Ahmed, who is running in the by-elections in Wakefield later this month, Paul Scully said:
This is not a comparison I would make. This is the first time I’ve heard of it, to be honest.
But when it comes to the trust of politicians, I think you have to look at why people get into politics, and the vast, huge, huge majority of my colleagues on both sides of the House do it for the right reasons: to do the best for their constituents. and the country.
They don’t agree on how to do it, but they do it for the right reason.
Read the full story of Ahmed’s comments here:
The Tory MP warns the prime minister not to end his role as an ethics adviser
Former government anti-corruption activist John Penrose has called on the government not to “leave a lot of harmful issues hanging”, not replacing Christopher Hyde after the resignation of ethics adviser on Wednesday.
Asked about Lord Hyde’s work as an investigation into the Downing Street apartment, the Weston-Super-Mare Conservative MP told BBC Radio 4’s Today program:
I think one of the reasons why it’s important to have some continuity, why it’s important to have if not an exact replacement, then an effective consistency here is to make sure you don’t leave really harmful issues hanging and that all that is unfulfilled, not just forgotten and lost.
He said of the report in the apartment:
I don’t know how finished it is, I don’t know if there’s anything that still needs to be done on it, or if it’s not just sitting on …
Add Comment