Downing Street has said that prime minister, Boris Johnson, had been aware of allegations of sexual misconduct made against Chris Pincher MP, before he was appointed Tory deputy chief whip in February 2022.
Following complaints that he had groped two men at London’s Carlton Club on Wednesday (June 29), Pincher (pictured) resigned as deputy chief whip the following day and was suspended from the Conservative party on Friday (July 1).
Since his suspension, a number of historical claims of previous misconduct against Pincher have come to light. The MP for Tamworth, currently sitting as an independent, denies the claims.
After Labour chair Anneliese Dodds wrote to the PM to ask whether he’d been aware of Pincher’s track record when choosing to appoint him to the whips’ office, Downing Street has now confirmed that Johnson was aware of allegations made against him, but Pincher was given the promotion anyway because the claims could not be proven.
The official spokesman for the prime minister said that Johnson knew of “allegations” against Pincher that were “either resolved or did not progress to a formal complaint", explaining that "it was deemed not appropriate” by the PM “to stop an appointment simply because of unsubstantiated allegations".
The spokesman did not disclose whether Johnson’s former aide, Dominic Cummings, had been truthful in his claims that the PM had referred to the disgraced MP as “Pincher by name, pincher by nature” prior to appointing him.
Pincher’s resignation last Thursday is the second time he has stepped down from a role in the whips’ office, having left post as Comptroller of the Household in 2017 after Tory candidate Alex Story accused him of inappropriate behaviour. Pincher was later cleared having deemed not to have breached party code.
While the prime minister is facing questions from both inside and outside of his own party over his handling of the allegations against Pincher, Johnson's fellow cabinet minister, Nadhim Zahawi, has leapt to his defence.
The education secretary said that Johnson had done “the right thing” in appointing Pincher and later suspending him when last week’s incident came to light, having reviewed “allegations in the past” which were found “not to be correct” when making the initial appointment.
Image by Richard Townshend on Wikimedia Commons
