MAY AXES HER DEPUTY OVER PORN LIES
Damian Green made ‘inaccurate and misleading’ statements
THERESA May was finally forced to sack Damian Green for lying about a probe over porn on his PC.
An inquiry found her deputy made “inaccurate and misleading” statements over what he knew.
THERESA May’s Cabinet was plunged into turmoil last night after she finally accepted Damian Green lied about porn on his office computer.
The PM’s right-hand man had claimed for weeks that he knew nothing of the images – but a probe found he breached the ministerial code with “inaccurate and misleading” statements.
He admitted police had told him about the porn as far back as 2008.
Mrs May launched the inquiry almost two months ago and was forced to axe him yesterday.
Mr Green apologised for his behaviour, yet the former minister still insisted he was not aware how the images got on to his computer.
The 61-year-old is the third Cabinet minister after Sir Michael Fallon and Priti Patel to quit in just seven weeks. But the timing of Mrs May’s decision to accept his resignation, just before the Christmas holiday, sparked criticism that she was too weak to sack him when the spotlight was on him over the pornography claims. Just hours earlier, Mr Green had sat next to Mrs May at the final PMQs of 2017. Photographers had later arrived at Downing Street yesterday to take pictures of the Cabinet discussing Brexit but were mysteriously booted out 10 minutes beforehand. Mr Green would have been expecting to been by the PM’s side. The inquiry by Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood was triggered after writer and Tory activist Kate Maltby claimed Mr Green “fleetingly” touched her knee at a pub in 2015, and sent her a “suggestive” text when she was pictured wearing a corset in a newspaper. In his resignation letter to Mrs May, he said: “From the outset I have been clear that I did not download or view pornography on my parliamentary computers. I accept I should have been clear in my press statements that police lawyers talked to my lawyers in 2008 about the pornography on the computers, and the police raised it with me in a subsequent phone call in 2013.
“I apologise that my statements were misleading on this point.
“The unfounded and deeply hurtful allegations that were being levelled at me were distressing both to me and my family and it is right these are being investigated by the police’s professional standards department.
“I deeply regret the distress caused to Kate Maltby following her article about me and the reaction to it.
“I do not recognise the events she described in her article, but I clearly made her feel