PM accused of failure to heed ‘abuse’ warnings

Boris Johnson is facing a backlash over the promotion of his ally Chris Pincher as a group of Conservative parliamentary staffers accuse the prime minister of a “failure to act on warnings” of alleged sexual misconduct by his MPs.

As fresh claims emerged about Pincher, who resigned as deputy chief whip over allegations that he groped two men in a London club, No 10 continued to insist that Johnson was unaware of any “specific” warnings until last week.

However, a whips’ office source acknowledged yesterday that a “matter” relating to Pincher had in fact been reported to them during the February reshuffle. The source had previously denied receiving any complaints or warnings – formal or informal – about his conduct.

Johnson is likely to face questions about what he knew about allegations concerning Pincher in parliament this week after

five further reports of alleged misconduct emerged over the weekend, including groping Tory MPs. Pincher denies all the allegations.

The warning to the whips’ office in February is believed to have come from a Tory MP who was the subject of an unwanted pass from Pincher. A second MP told the Guardian they raised allegations of sexual misconduct by Pincher with their whip, but without making a formal complaint because they were not personally a victim. He said he had told the whips’ office in February that Pincher should not be in the job because he could not be trusted with young male staff. “I told a whip what I thought of Pincher, and that he had a terrible reputation with younger staff and MPs which had not gone away. That still stands.”

The MP said they had not made a specific allegation, because that would have resulted in a full inquiry and he could not guarantee that accusers would come forward. “I would not have wanted to have done that without a victim’s express permission. But I wanted them to know that there were claims out there.”

A third MP said they had warned senior figures in the party “Pincher should not be anywhere near the whips’ office”, let alone in the deputy role that conferred responsibility for welfare of MPs as well as discipline.

There were also reports that Steve Barclay, Johnson’s chief of staff, tried to block Pincher’s appointment and asked for an investigation by the Cabinet Office’s propriety and ethics team. A group of parliamentary aides, called Conservative Staffers for Change, who previously wrote to Johnson with general concerns about sexual misconduct in Westminster, said yesterday that the stories now about Pincher “come as no surprise”, adding: “His behaviour was an open secret in Westminster and it is disappointing that this was not addressed sooner. Having raised concerns about sexual misconduct with the chief whip, we were disappointed not only by how long it took to remove the whip from Pincher, but also at the continued lack of clarity about the PM’s knowledge of his behaviour.

“We wrote the letter to the PM raising concerns about illegal sexual misconduct [by those in power abusing their positions] in May yet received no response. This is about more than just the culture in Westminster, it is about the PM’s failure to act on warnings of serious misconduct from those in government.”

The two parliamentary staffers representing the group are to meet Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, this week to “raise concerns about parliament as a workplace and how our employment structures can be reformed”.

Conservative MPs have also been raising concerns with their whips about why the party refused to take any allegations about Pincher seriously without a formal complaint by an alleged victim to the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme.

The former Conservative deputy chief whip Anne Milton told the Guardian: “I feel very angry that in this day and age this sort of behaviour still goes on… Victims will come forward if they trust the process and the individual that they are going to. That person doesn’t have to be in the whips office, just a senior person with responsibility. And absolutely witnesses should be able to come forward with complaints. It’s nonsense having a system without that.”

Senior Conservatives remain adamant that the Tory MP Craig Whittaker stepped down as a whip in February because of outstanding allegations of harassment against Pincher, despite Whittaker’s denial.

Whittaker, the MP for Calder Valley, issued a statement to the Halifax Courier yesterday saying he had stood down as a whip for health reasons, and not because he opposed the appointment of Pincher, as was claimed on Saturday.

But one senior Tory source said: “There is no doubt that Craig was concerned about Pincher taking up a key role that gave him power over younger MPs, he has told people that that was the reason. Are we really supposed to believe that this was not then passed on to the PM? It is stretching the bounds of credibility.”

Labour wrote to Johnson demanding answers about how Pincher came to be appointed deputy chief whip.

In a letter to the prime minister, Anneliese Dodds, the Labour party chair, asked why he was not asking the party to investigate Pincher, unlike the inquiry into Neil Parish, the Tory MP who resigned for watching pornography in the Commons.

“Only Boris Johnson could have looked at this guy’s record and thought “he deserves a promotion,” Dodds said.