MAY SACKS DEPUTY OVER PORN LIES
Green forced to resign by PM over porn lies
THERESA May dramatically sacked her deputy last night after a probe found he breached the ministerial code over porn on his computer.
Damian Green, one of May’s closest allies and university pal, was forced to quit after the breach was discovered.
The stunning development plunged the Prime Minister into turmoil days before Christmas.
Yesterday, Green was pictured sitting beside May at the last Prime Minister’s Questions of 2017. Hours later, Green, 61, became the third Cabinet minister – after Sir Michael Fallon and Priti Patel – to quit in just seven weeks.
He resigned after he was found to have made “inaccurate and misleading” statements about what he knew about claims pornography had been found on a computer in his Commons office in 2008.
In his resignation letter, Green apologised for his conduct. The Prime Minister said she was “extremely sad” at his exit.
Green said he “regrets” having been asked to resign and apologised for breaches of the ministerial code.
But the First Secretary last night still denied downloading or watching porn on his computer.
In a letter to 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 that the police raised it with me in a 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 to me and my family and it is right that these are being investigated by the Metropolitan Police’s professional standards department.”
May said she had “carefully considered” the findings of Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood’s investigation into statements Green made on November 4 and 11, which he has now accepted were “inaccurate and misleading”.
The PM added: “This falls short of the Seven Principles of Public Life and is a breach of the ministerial code – a conclusion which has been endorsed by Sir Alex Allan, the independent adviser on ministers’ interests.
“While I can understand the considerable distress caused to you by some of the allegations made in recent weeks, I know that you share my commitment to maintaining the high standards which the public demands of ministers of the Crown.
“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.”
Sir Jeremy shared the findings with Sir Alex, who wrote to the PM confirming the report is a “clear and comprehensive account”.
The inquiry was triggered after Kate Maltby claimed Green “fleetingly” touched her knee during a meeting in a pub in 2015, and a year later sent her a “suggestive” text message after she was pictured wearing a corset in a newspaper.
The Cabinet Secretary said that with “competing and contradictory accounts of what were private meetings” it was “not possible to reach a definitive conclusion on the appropriateness of Green’s behaviour with Kate Maltby in early 2015, though the investigation found Ms Maltby’s account to be plausible”.