Priti’s humiliation

Minister admits: Boris didn’t know about my 12 meetings in Israel

PRITI Patel’s Cabinet career was hanging by a thread last night after she was forced to apologise to Theresa May for holding secret talks with the Israeli prime minister.

She was reprimanded after confessing to meeting Benjamin Netenyahu during a ‘family holiday’ in August.

Mrs May summoned her to No 10 yesterday to ‘remind her of the obligations which exist under the ministerial code’, which requires ministers to avoid any perception of possible conflicts of interest.

Miss Patel admitted she had also held another 11 meetings with Israeli politicians, officials, businessmen and charity workers during her two-week summer holiday in the country.

The International Development Secretary was accompanied at the meetings by the Tory donor and lobbyist Lord Polak, honorary president of the influential Conservative Friends of Israel group, which has given the Tories almost £400,000 in recent years.

But, in a major breach of protocol, there were no government officials or British diplomats at any of the meetings. Neither the Foreign Office nor Downing Street were told about the initiative in advance.

Critics have claimed that Miss Patel was positioning herself for a potential Tory leadership bid.

Yesterday she also apologised for issuing misleading statements about the issue last week, saying there had been a ‘lack of precision’ in her response to initial reports. Last Friday only three meetings were known about.

Mrs May only learned about the meetings following media reports on Friday – the day after she met Mr Netenyahu for talks in London.

Miss Patel also suggested last week that she had told Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson about the talks, saying: ‘Boris knew about the visit. The point is the Foreign Office knew about this, Boris knew [about the trip].’

But yesterday the Department for International Development said Miss Patel would now ‘like to clarify that this was not the case – the Foreign Secretary did become aware of the visit, but not in advance of it’.

And Miss Patel admitted that she had commissioned work on a future aid partnership with Israel in the wake of the meetings.

Last night a senior Tory said Miss Patel was ‘toast’. Labour called for a Cabinet Office inquiry into whether she had breached the ministerial code. Its international development spokesman, Kate Osamor, said: ‘Today’s statement is a desperate last-ditch attempt by Priti Patel to save her job.

‘Not only does it look like she might have breached the ministerial code, she has now been caught misleading the British public.’

But, in a sign of the Government’s current weakness, Mrs May agreed to accept an apology.

Downing Street said it was not clear whether Miss Patel had broken the ministerial code – and said Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood had been asked to investigate whether the code should be tightened. The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said the Foreign Office was ‘clear that UK interests were not damaged by this’. But he was unable to say how the Foreign Office had come to this conclusion, given that no British officials were present at the meetings.

Miss Patel said the meetings had taken place during a two-week holiday with her husband and son. She added: ‘In hindsight, I can see how my enthusiasm to engage in this way could be misread, and how meetings were set up and reported in a way which did not accord with the usual procedures. I am sorry for this and I apologise for it. My first and only aim is to put the interests of British taxpayers and the world’s poor at the front of our development work.’

‘A desperate attempt to save her job’