Ex-Minister ‘may return to Government one day’

FOREIGN SECRETARY Boris Johnson has said he hopes Damian Green will one day be able to return to government office, despite his dismissal for misleading statements over pornography found on his computer.

Mr Johnson raised concerns that the former First Secretary of State may have been the victim of a “vendetta”, describing the leak of secret details from a police raid of his parliamentary offices as “a bit whiffy”.

The Foreign Secretary added his voice to calls for further investigation of the way that police evidence about the discovery of legal porn on Mr Green’s work computer found its way into the press.

Speaking yesterday during a visit to Moscow, Mr Johnson said: “I’m very sad for Damian and I think he has been a fine public servant and done a great job, and hopefully one day he will come back and continue to serve in other ways.

“I think plainly, judging by the exchange of letters, he agreed that he had broken the Ministerial code so the result was inevitable.

“But I think it was a bit whiffy, frankly, this business with whatever happened with the information from his computer.

“I don’t quite see why that was brought into the public domain in the way it was. I think it needs to be investigated further, as the Prime Minister was saying.

“It had the slight feeling of a vendetta.” DAMIAN GREEN was to all intents and purposes Theresa May’s right-hand man – and not just in a metaphorical sense.

With the title of First Secretary of State and a position as a trusted ally of Mrs May, Mr Green stood by his leader as the deal with the DUP was signed and sat next to her at numerous Prime Minister’s Questions.

But their long friendship did not stop her from asking him to resign from her Cabinet after an inquiry found he had breached the Ministerial code.

In the ritual exchange of letters, she expressed her “enduring gratitude for the contribution you have made over many years” – but she still asked him to resign – effectively sacking him.

Mr Green served under Mrs May at the Home Office for four years as Immigration Minister and Policing Minister until his surprise sacking by David Cameron in 2014.

Mrs May handed him the role of Work and Pensions Secretary in July 2016 in which he was responsible for the administration of the state pension and working age benefits system.

Educated at Balliol College, Oxford, he was the president of the prestigious Oxford Union, and it was here that he first met Mrs May through his then-girlfriend Alicia Collinson. After going down to inevitable defeat at the hands of Ken Livingstone in the safe Labour seat of Brent East in the 1992 General Election, he entered Parliament as MP for Ashford in Kent in 1997 – the same time as Mrs May – and has represented the seat ever since.

He joined the Tory frontbench soon after his arrival at Westminster, acting as spokesman for education and employment, then the environment, between 1998 and 2001, before being promoted to the Shadow Cabinet by Iain Duncan Smith as shadow Education Secretary.

He was moved out of the Shadow Cabinet when it was reduced in size as Michael Howard took the Tory helm, but served as Shadow Transport Secretary until 2004 when he stepped down from the frontbench, saying he wanted to argue the case for “compassionate Conservatism”.

On the backbenches, he sat on the influential Home Affairs and Treasury committees before being recruited as a member of Mr Cameron’s first frontbench team in December 2005.

Married to Alicia, with two daughters, Mr Green was educated at Reading School in Berkshire and gained a first-class honours degree in philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford. After university, he worked as a financial journalist, with jobs at the BBC Financial Unit, Channel 4 News and