Zahawi faces Tory pressure over tax ‘errors’

Former minister says party chairman’s position is untenable ‘as it was a lot of money to be careless about’

NADHIM ZAHAWI has faced the first Tory calls to resign after admitting that “errors” in his tax affairs had been deemed “careless” by HMRC.

A former Cabinet minister said the Tory chairman’s position had become “untenable” as other senior backbenchers, including Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former leader, called on him to release full details of his tax affairs despite his weekend statement.

James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary, refused to back Mr Zahawi, after being asked whether he had confidence in him as party chairman, saying that it was a decision for the Prime Minister.

No10 sought to distance the PM from the row, saying that Cabinet Office officials had advised there was nothing to stop Mr Sunak appointing him as Tory chairman last October.

By then, Mr Zahawi’s dispute with HMRC had been resolved.

The calls followed a statement issued by Mr Zahawi on Saturday in which he confirmed he had reached a multimillion-pound settlement with HMRC over the tax dispute involving polling firm Yougov, which he founded.

In his statement, he implied that he had been asked to pay a penalty, noting that the HMRC concluded that he had made a “careless and not deliberate” error. He indicated that the agreement was made at the time he was chancellor. Since last summer, Mr Zahawi has faced questions over why shares from Yougov were kept in Balshore Investments, a Gibraltar-registered family trust.

Yesterday the former Cabinet minister said: “I think his position is untenable, frankly. I really do, because he said he’d been careless.

“That’s a heck of a big sum of money to be careless about. Given that the chairman has overall responsibility for the Conservative Party, and the Treasurer of the Conservative Party is answerable to him, I don’t think it’s easy to see how he can continue in that role.

“Because it was an awful lot of money to be careless about, I just think it’s impossible for him to continue and I’m pretty sure a lot of other people feel the same way.”

Meanwhile, Sir Iain told the BBC’S Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg: “I’m always of the view with these things that the sooner you can get the actual facts out, the better, rather than have them coming out in phases.”

“[Nadhim] is in a way a peculiar British

success story, because he’s a person that’s come into the country fleeing Iraq, has been successful in setting up a global brand, so all of that, in a way, is remarkable and it says a lot about the UK and diversity and everything else.

“But I would say to him, if he was here – get it all out now, whatever you have to do, and clear it up. I genuinely don’t believe this is a man who is deceitful in any shape or form. But this goes on and on, and the media waits. So I think I would just clear it up.”

Another former Cabinet minister concurred: “He needs to make a fuller statement about what happened, and then I think it would be easier to judge his position. There are gaps and we certainly need to know the truth. At the moment, you can’t judge if this is a sacking offence or pushing the boat out too far. It’d be much easier for people like me to go public in defence of him if I knew the facts.”

Speaking on Times Radio, Peter Aldous, the Conservative MP for Waveney, questioned whether someone in dispute with the HMRC should “ever have been appointed chancellor”.

Asked on GB News by Camilla Tominey, The Telegraph associate editor, whether he had confidence in Mr Zahawi, Mr Cleverly said it was a decision for the Prime Minister.

“I am not going to start play acting being Prime Minister,” he said.