Downing Street has suggested Boris Johnson forgot he was briefed about a formal complaint against Chris Pincher as No 10 rejected accusations it had lied about the scandal.
No 10 initially claimed on Friday that Mr Johnson had not been aware of any “specific allegations” against Mr Pincher at the time of the February reshuffle.
It then changed its position yesterday as it said the PM was aware of claims made against Mr Pincher before he was appointed to the role of deputy chief whip but they had either been “resolved or did not progress to a formal complaint”.
Downing Street today confirmed that Mr Johnson was briefed on a 2019 complaint made against Mr Pincher when he was a Foreign Office minister but the PM had initially failed to “recall” that he had been told about it.
The Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman stressed that the briefing was actually a “brief conversation that took place around three years ago”.
The spokesman also insisted that No 10 has always been truthful in its statements on the scandal after Lord McDonald, the former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, accused Downing Street of lying.
Senior Tory MP John Penrose, the Government’s former anti-corruption tsar, asked Michael Ellis, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, when he would finally say “enough is enough” and no longer defend the Government.
Mr Penrose said Lord McDonald’s letter made it “clear” that No 10 has “not been honest in what they have said”.
William Wragg, the Tory chairman of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Select Committee, told Mr Ellis that ministers should ask themselves if “they can any longer tolerate being part of a Government which, for better or worse, is widely regarded of having lost its sense of direction”.
Labour’s Chris Bryant, the chairman of the Commons Standards Committee, said he knew of “many decent Conservative MPs” who feel “terribly ashamed by everything that is happening in this sordid process”.