Williamson accused of ‘threatening’ behaviour by former deputy chief whipAnne Milton, the former deputy chief whip Anne Milton who worked closely with Sir Gavin Williamson when he was chief whip, has claimed he used “leverage” and threats to control MPs and instil a culture of fear in Westminster.
Milton told Channel 4 News of an alleged incident, when she says that the whips’ office gave some financial assistance to an MP: “I do remember him asking me to give the MP in question the cheque. And he waved it under my nose and said, ‘Make sure when you give him this cheque, he knows I now own him.’”
Milton said: “I don’t think it was a joke. It was the seriousness with which he said it. And I think that the bottom line is, if instances accord with your overall experience with somebody, then you believe them.”
She added that she gave the MP the cheque but didn’t pass on Williamson’s message.
Milton alleges Williamson behaved in an “unethical and immoral” and “shocking” manner during his time as Chief Whip between July 2016 and November 2017.
She also accused Williamson of using MPs’ mental and physical health problems as “leverage”.
Milton describes Williamson’s behaviour while chief whip as “threatening” and “intimidating”.
She added: “It’s an image he cultivates. I think he feels that he’s Francis Urquhart from House of Cards.”
“Make sure when you give him this cheque he knows that I now own him.”
Sir Gavin Williamson has been accused of issuing an inappropriate threat to an MP in financial trouble by former deputy chief whip Anne Milton, who used to work with him when he was chief whip. pic.twitter.com/bo8WTBkGmQ
— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) November 8, 2022
Anne Milton has also accused Sir Gavin Williamson of behaving in an “unethical and immoral” way as chief whip.
Milton, who lost the Tory whip during the Brexit rows in 2019 and subsequently lost her seat, told Channel 4 News: “I got the impression that he loved salacious gossip, and would use it as leverage against MPs if the need arose.”
She also told the broadcaster that Sir Gavin had an expletive-filled rant about civil servants in 2016 in response to a female official asking why a minister had to change travel plans for a vote.
“Always tell them to f*** off and if they have the bollocks to come and see me,” he said in an email, according to Ms Milton.
“F****** jumped up civil servants.”
Williamson accused of ‘threatening’ behaviour by former deputy chief whipAnne Milton, the former deputy chief whip Anne Milton who worked closely with Sir Gavin Williamson when he was chief whip, has claimed he used “leverage” and threats to control MPs and instil a culture of fear in Westminster.
Milton told Channel 4 News of an alleged incident, when she says that the whips’ office gave some financial assistance to an MP: “I do remember him asking me to give the MP in question the cheque. And he waved it under my nose and said, ‘Make sure when you give him this cheque, he knows I now own him.’”
Milton said: “I don’t think it was a joke. It was the seriousness with which he said it. And I think that the bottom line is, if instances accord with your overall experience with somebody, then you believe them.”
She added that she gave the MP the cheque but didn’t pass on Williamson’s message.
Milton alleges Williamson behaved in an “unethical and immoral” and “shocking” manner during his time as Chief Whip between July 2016 and November 2017.
She also accused Williamson of using MPs’ mental and physical health problems as “leverage”.
Milton describes Williamson’s behaviour while chief whip as “threatening” and “intimidating”.
She added: “It’s an image he cultivates. I think he feels that he’s Francis Urquhart from House of Cards.”
“Make sure when you give him this cheque he knows that I now own him.”
Sir Gavin Williamson has been accused of issuing an inappropriate threat to an MP in financial trouble by former deputy chief whip Anne Milton, who used to work with him when he was chief whip. pic.twitter.com/bo8WTBkGmQ
— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) November 8, 2022 Four Conservative MPs who were loyal to Boris Johnson and have been nominated for peerages have agreed to delay accepting them to avoid triggering byelections, writes Aletha Adu and Peter Walker.
Rishi Sunak is facing pressure to block the former PM’s “conveyor belt of cronies” after Johnson told Tory MPs to hold back on heading to the Lords until the end of the current parliament so the party doesn’t face a number of potentially difficult election challenges.
The ultra-loyal Nadine Dorries, the former culture secretary; Alok Sharma, the Cop26 president; Alister Jack, the Scottish secretary, and Nigel Adams are set to be on Johnson’s resignation list.
After it emerged that British immigration officers could be stationed in French control rooms for the first time under a new deal to curb Channel crossings, the work and pensions secretary, Mel Stride, hailed the “fundamental shift” in the tone of relations between Britain and France as officials thrashed out the final details of the deal.
He told Sky News: “The mood music seems to be good at the moment.
“My understanding is we’re in the final stages of what could be an agreement, which would be very good news.
“I think there has been a fundamental shift in the tone between ourselves and the French.”
The government said the fresh agreement between the UK and France, understood to be worth about £80m, is in its final stages.
An additional £5m of funding to tackle loss and damage has been announced by the first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, at the Cop27 climate summit.
The funds take Scotland’s commitment to addressing loss and damage caused by the climate crisis to £7m and will enable communities to take direct action to address the impacts of loss and damage.
The government said this includes slow-onset effects such as sea level rise and non-economic effects including the loss of cultural identity.
It will also help to tackle existing inequalities, including gender inequalities, which are exacerbated by the effects of climate change.
Andrew Sparrow
The crisis at the Manston processing centre for refugees in Kent is not yet over, Dame Diana Johnson, the chair of the Commons home affairs committee has said.
In a statement released after her committee visited the centre today, Johnson, a Labour MP, said:
What the home affairs committee saw at Manston revealed that while overcrowding has reduced, and staff are making valiant efforts to improve conditions for detainees, the crisis is not over. We encountered families who had been sleeping on mats on the floor for weeks. Meanwhile there are ongoing questions about the legality of the home secretary’s decision to detain people at the site for longer than 24 hours.
The Home Office has been running to keep up with this escalating crisis, rather than warding it off at the outset through planning and preparation. The numbers of people crossing the Channel in small boats this year will not have been a surprise to the government, so why were adequate preparations not made? This question matters – because we may still see another major upsurge in the number of people arriving at Manston before the end of this year.
The home secretary needs to end this crisis once and for all. That requires dealing with the backlog in the asylum system and establishing a system that is efficient and fair.
That is all from me for today. My colleague Nadeem Badshah is now taking over.
Migrants at the Manston processing centre today. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PAAngela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, has criticised Rishi Sunak’s decision to give Sir Gavin Williamson ministerial responsibilities relating to communications and security.
According to the Cabinet Office, Williamson’s responsibilities will include the Government Communications Service and the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF). The CSSF is a cross-government initiative that funds projects that contribute to national security – normally peace-keeping operations abroad, in places where instability could pose a threat to other countries.
Rayner said:
Gavin Williamson has not only been given a vote of confidence by the prime minister but handed crucial national security and government communications responsibilities, despite having previously been sacked from cabinet of leaking details of a national security council meeting.
After a week of appalling allegations about intimidatory behaviour towards colleagues, the prime minister has rewarded Williamson by giving him authority over huge swathes of the civil service.
The fact Rishi Sunak appointed him and then promoted him shows a weak prime minister who puts party management before the national interest.
Tory MP Mark Francois says comment about Japanese ‘an abbreviation’ and not intended to cause offenceThe Conservative MP Mark Francois has said that, when he used the word “Japs” in the Commons yesterday, he did not mean to cause offence, and was just trying to shorten a lengthy question.
In a statement responding to criticism of what he said from Labour (see 2.27pm), Francois also said he was complimenting the Japanese. He said:
I meant absolutely no disrespect or offence to anyone by using the phrase ‘Japs’ during defence questions in the House of Commons yesterday. I merely used it as an abbreviation for Japanese as I had, by then, been asking an admittedly rather wordy question, about naval shipbuilding.
Moreover, in the course of that same question, as the record clearly shows, I actually complimented the Japanese shipbuilding industry for building warships much faster than here in Britain.
Yvette Cooper intervenes. She asks if Quin has seen the conclusions of the leak inquiries involving Suella Braverman when she was attorney general. And did the PM see those before he appointed her?
Quin says successive governments have not commented on leak inquiries.
And the fact that a minister is considered by a leak inquiry does not mean they are at fault, he says. He says it just means they had access to the information that was leaked.
He says, if Labour’s motion were to pass, it would set a damaging precedent for the future.
Jeremy Quin, the Cabinet Office minister, is responding to Yvette Cooper on behalf of the government.
He says MPs should be debating more important matters, like the improvement in conditions at the Manston processing centre for migrants.
He says Suella Braverman set out in detail what led up to her resignation in the open letter she released.
The prime minister considered the matter was closed, and brought her back, he says.
Dame Meg Hillier says what matters is Braverman’s judgment. And her judgment has not improved after her six-day resignation.
Quin says Braverman recognises that she made an error. She apologised, and the mistake will not be repeated, he says.
Back in the Commons, Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, says a series of Tory prime ministers have not taken security seriously.
And if Rishi Sunak is taking this seriously, the government should publish the papers requested by the motion, so MPs can see. She goes on:
[Sunak has] only been post two weeks and already we’ve got this chaos in place.
He said he wants to stand up for integrity – so enforce the ministerial code.
He said he wants professionalism – so appoint people who can do the job.
And he said he wants accountability – so support this motion and show some accountability to the house.
Sunak won’t block peerages proposed by Johnson in his resignation honours, No 10 saysDowning Street has said Rishi Sunak is not going to block Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list, as Labour has argued he should. (See 3.34pm.) Asked if Sunak would block the peerages proposed by Johnson, the PM’s spokesperson replied:
There’s a longstanding convention that prime ministers do not seek to intervene in former prime ministers’ resignation honours lists. That’s been a case under successive governments. The prime minister is of the view that he will approach it as has been the case of successive governments.
Cooper says Braverman broke the ministerial code when she was home secretary. This was admitted in her account of her resignation.
But she may have also have broken the ministerial code by ignoring legal advice, she says. She says only yesterday Grant Shapps said the Home Office was close to acting illegally when he replaced her.
Gary Sambrook (Con) intervenes, and says Labour MPs supported making Jeremy Corbyn prime minister, even though he did not trust what the security services were saying regarding the Salisbury poisonings.
In response, Cooper says she was a backbencher at the time, and disagreed with Corbyn’s stance on that. She says Sambrook should be more worried about Boris Johnson, who attended a party where he met a former KGB officer, without his officials, when he was foreign secretary.
Cooper says Suella Braverman was involved in leak inquiries when she was attorney general. One of those leaks was quoted against the government in court, making it harder for the goverment to make its case, Cooper says.
She says Braverman should take standards seriously.
If the PM has confidence in the home secretary not to be careless with security, he should release the facts, she says.
She says she wants to know what information Rishi Sunak had about Braverman before he reappointed her. Was he advised not to reappoint her on security grounds?
If Sunak was told it was safe to reappoint her he should provide the evidence, she says. But if he was advised not to reappoint her, people should know.
MPs debate motion calling for release of papers relating to Braverman’s reappointment and her involvement in leaksYvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, is now opening the debate on the Labour motion that would force the government to publish government papers relating to the decision to reappoint Braverman as home secretary, and any security breaches or leak inquiries she was involved in.
She starts by listing some of the allegations against Braverman. But, as she makes the point that what has happened has undermined the government’s reputation for integrity, she also refers to Gavin Williamson getting a job despite having told an official to “slit your throat”.
She says outside the Tory party people find it hard to understand why Braverman was reappointed home secretary less than a week after having to resign.
No 10 says Sunak could take action on Williamson without waiting for all inquiries into him to concludeAt the afternoon lobby briefing the prime minister’s spokesperson said that Rishi Sunak intends to wait until all the inquiries into Gavin Williamson are complete before deciding whether he should keep his job – but he did not rule out acting soon.
There are now three inquiries underway: a CCHQ one into the complaint from Wendy Morton; a parliamentary one into the same allegations; and a No 10 inquiry of some sort into the revelations in the Guardian today about Williamson telling an MoD official to “slit your throat”.
Asked when the PM might respond, the spokesperson indicated that although he was minded to wait until the external inquiries were concluded, he could act earlier. The spokesperson said:
I don’t think he necessarily feels that the idea would be for him to wait until both of those things [the CCHQ inquiry and the parliamentary inquiry] have fully concluded. Obviously he would act if and when he felt it appropriate to do so.