May ordered deputy to quit over porn on computer
Inquiry found Green had misled MPs and the public
DAMIAN Green was forced to resign as the UK’s First Secretary of State last night after a Cabinet Office investigation found that he had misled the public and MPs over what he knew about pornography found on an office computer.
Prime Minister Theresa May’s de facto deputy was told by her to quit in a letter which said his conduct had breached the ministerial code of conduct and “fallen short” of the behaviour expected of ministers.
He is the third Cabinet minister to be forced from office in the past two months, meaning Mrs May ends the year with yet another crisis, after she had appeared to have changed her fortunes with success in the Brexit talks.
A seven-week inquiry, launched after allegations of inappropriate behaviour towards women, found that Green had misled the public in two statements he made last month, denying that the police had ever told him about the material being found in a raid on his office in 2008.
In fact, the police had raised it with his solicitor in 2008 and with him directly in 2013.
Mrs May received the report on Monday. She passed it to Alex Allan, her independent adviser on ministerial standards, who agreed with its findings. She told Mr Green to resign yesterday and is not expected to replace him in the immediate future.
Feud
Mr Green’s demise is the result of a decade-long feud with former Metropolitan Police officers, who leaked details of the raid in recent weeks after the Cabinet Office started investigating Mr Green.
Sue Gray, the Cabinet Office official who investigated Mr Green’s behaviour, did not present the prime minister with any conclusions about whether he had behaved inappropriately towards the journalist Kate Maltby, whose complaint triggered the inquiry, or whether he had ever viewed or downloaded pornography at work.
Mr Green (61) expressed clear frustration in his resignation letter, saying: “I regret that I’ve been asked to resign from the government.”
His letter also contained a parting shot at Scotland Yard, saying allegations that he might have viewed pornography were “deeply hurtful” and “it is right that these are being investigated by the Metropolitan Police’s professional standards department”.
Mr Green accepted that police lawyers had talked to his lawyers in 2008 and that the police raised it in a subsequent phone call in 2013.
He said: “I apologise that my statements were misleading on this point.” He also apologised for breaching the Ministerial Code and for making Ms Maltby “feel uncomfortable”.
In a letter to Mr Green, who has been a close friend since they were at university together, Mrs May said she was “extremely sad” to be writing to him, but that in the light of the report’s findings his behaviour “falls short” of “the high standards which the public demands of ministers of the crown”.
She added: “It is therefore with deep regret, and enduring gratitude for the contribution you have made over many years, that I asked you to resign from the government and have accepted your resignation.” However, Mrs May’s letter contained a stinging rebuke for the Met after two former officers breached a “duty of confidentiality” by revealing details of what was found on Mr Green’s computer in 2008 when his office was raided during an investigation over the leaking of confidential information.
The prime minister wrote: “I shared the concerns raised from across the political spectrum when your parliamentary office was raided in 2008 when you were a shadow home office minister holding the then Labour government to account. And I share the concerns, raised once again from across the political spectrum, at the comments made by a former officer involved in that case in recent weeks. I am glad that the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police’s professional standards department is reviewing the comments which have been made.”
The Cabinet Office report stated that: “Mr Green’s statements of 4 and 11 November, which suggested that he was not aware that indecent material was found on parliamentary computers in his office, were inaccurate and misleading, as the Metropolitan Police Service had previously informed him of the existence of this material.
“These statements therefore fall short of the honesty requirement of the Seven Principles of Public Life and constitute breaches of the Ministerial Code. Mr Green accepts this.”
The investigation concluded that because of “competing and contradictory accounts” of meetings between Mr Green and Ms Maltby it was not possible “to reach a definitive conclusion on the appropriateness of Mr Green’s behaviour”, however, the investigation “found Ms Maltby’s account to be plausible”.
Meanwhile, Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle questioned if Brexit Secretary David Davis’s position is “untenable” after Damian Green’s sacking.
A source close to Mr Davis has confirmed he would not quit the Government in protest at Mr Green’s sacking, despite a report earlier this month that he had threatened to resign if the First Secretary of State was forced out over the material found by the police. Mr Davis was Mr Green’s boss as shadow home secretary at the time of the police raid.
Brexit
Earlier yesterday Mrs May said she would permit a delay to Britain’s departure from the European Union in exceptional circumstances, bowing to criticism from her own party over the government’s plan to fix the exit date in law.
The decision is a compromise with Conservative lawmakers who last week rebelled in parliament and inflicted an embarrassing defeat on Mrs May during a debate on the legislation that will end Britain’s EU membership.
The legislation later won approval to move to the next stage of the parliamentary process, although it still faces weeks of further scrutiny before becoming law.
Mrs May headed off a second rebellion by agreeing that her government’s plan to define the date of Britain’s EU exit as March 29, 2019, should be tempered by inserting a proviso allowing that date to be changed if necessary. She had sought a following transition lasting around two years.
The EU said yesterday it wants a transition period after Brexit to end no later than the last day of 2020. EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, said the deadline was logical and would avoid complications in the next 2021-2027 EU budget period.