Patel says her standards fell short as she quits Cabinet
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PRITI PATEL last night quit her Cabinet role and acknowledged that her “actions fell below the standards of transparency and openness” she had advocated.
Her decision to resign as International Development Secretary came after being summoned back from an official visit to Africa for a showdown with Theresa May in Downing Street.
Ms Patel had been intending to spend three days in Kenya and Uganda, but was forced to cut short her trip and return home from Nairobi to explain the disclosure of further unauthorised meetings with Israeli politicians.
In a letter to the Prime Minister, Ms Patel said: “I offer a fulsome apology to you and to the Government for what has happened and offer my resignation.”
Ms Patel’s downfall came after it emerged she had a series of 12 meetings with senior Israeli figures during a holiday in the country in August.
She then held two additional meetings, one in the UK and one in the US, following her return from Israel.
In a further development, the Israeli Haaretz newspaper reported that during her stay in the country she visited an Israeli military field hospital in the occupied Golan Heights.
In her letter Ms Patel said: “In recent days there have been a number of reports about my actions and I am sorry that these have served as a distraction from the work of the Department for International Development and of the Government as a whole.
“As you know from our discussions I accept that in meeting with organisations and politicians during a private holiday in Israel my actions fell below the high standards that are expected of a Secretary of State.
“While my actions were meant with the best of intentions, my actions also fell below the standards of transparency and openness that I have promoted and advocated.”
Under intense media scrutiny – including thousands of people following the progress of her plane on a flight tracking website – Ms Patel arrived back in the UK on a Kenya Airways flight to Heathrow. Ms Patel’s early return
Heathrow. Ms Patel’s early return to the UK followed the disclosure that she met Israeli public security minister Gilad Erdan in Parliament on September 7, and foreign ministry official Yuval Rotem in New York on September 18.
It is understood that Downing Street was told about the New York breakfast with Mr Rotem when Ms Patel revealed the details of her trip to Israel, but No 10 only learnt on Tuesday about the meeting with Mr Erdan.
No British officials were present and, like her meetings in Israel, she did not report them to the Foreign Office or Government in the usual way.
She was accompanied at all the meetings bar one in Israel by the honorary president of the Conservative Friends of Israel lobbying group, Lord Polak.
Labour has already demanded an investigation by the Prime Minister’s standards adviser into Ms Patel’s meetings with the Israeli government, claiming they involved four “serious breaches” of the ministerial code.
Number 10 confirmed that Ms Patel had discussed the possibility of UK aid being used to support medical assistance for refugees from the Syrian civil war arriving in the Golan Heights.
However the Prime Minister’s official spokesman was unable to say whether she had explained when she met Mrs May that the scheme would have involved supplying funds to the Israeli army.
THERESA MAY – and Britain – continue to be let down by those Ministers whose conduct and judgement is causing mounting embarrassment as the country becomes gripped by political paralysis. The list grows by the day and it is indicative of the Prime Minister’s weakness that Priti Patel, who has quit as International Development Secretary, thought she could run a freelance foreign policy without censure.
She would have resigned – or been sacked – straight away in any previous era for breaking diplomatic protocols and meeting the likes of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu without first informing the Foreign Office. She failed to disclose the full facts to Mrs May before flying off to Africa for a visit which had to be aborted when ordered to fly home to tender her resignation.
However, while Mrs May’s position is handicapped by Brexit and the delicate balances required if the Government is to survive until March 2019 when Britain leaves the EU, the actual calibre of ministers at the country’s disposal should be scrutinised.
How many would be employed by the most reputable companies? Perhaps half at best. How many of the scandal-hit Ministers would have been recruited by the private sector if their character had been subjected to due diligence? Not many. Faith placed in the likes of Sir Michael Fallon, the now ex-Defence Secretary, looks even more misplaced.
And this does not reflect well on Mrs May as she struggles to enforce Cabinet basic discipline. Promoting loyalists with little proven track record might help to shore up her position in the very short-term but what this country needs – and expects – is the best people for the job, starting now, so the UK is better-equipped to withstand an increasingly fragile economy and the small matter of Brexit.