Tory MP John Penrose has resigned as the government's anti-corruption tsar, saying the Prime Minister has "breached a fundamental principle of the ministerial code".

The resignation comes ahead of tonight's vote of no confidence in Boris Johnson. 

In an open letter, Mr Penrose criticises the Prime Minister's claim last week that he had not broken the ministerial code. 

On Tuesday, No 10 published a letter to Christopher Geidt, his independent adviser on ministers’ interests, in which Mr Johnson said that “taking account of all the circumstances, I did not breach the code”.

That followed a report by the independent adviser which there was a “legitimate question” about whether receiving a fixed-penalty notice for breaking coronavirus rules constituted a breach of the code.

 

In his letter Mr Penrose said: "My reason for stepping down is your public letter last week, replying to your independent adviser on the ministerial code about the recent Sue Gray report into ‘partygate’.

"In it you addressed the concerns over the fixed penalty notice you paid, but not the broader and very serious criticisms of what the report called ‘failures of leadership and judgment’ and its conclusion that ‘senior leadership at the centre, both political and official, must bear responsibility for this culture’.

"You will know (and your letter to your adviser on the ministerial code explicitly says) that the Nolan principles of public life are absolutely central to the ministerial code, and that the seventh of them is ‘leadership’.

"So the only fair conclusion to draw from the Sue Gray report is that you have breached a fundamental principle of the ministerial code - a clear resigning matter.

"But your letter to your independent adviser on the ministerial code ignores this absolutely central, non-negotiable issue completely. And, if it had addressed it, it is hard to see how it could have reached any other conclusion than that you had broken the code."

Mr Penrose, who has served as the Government’s anti-corruption champion since December 2017, said he was not unhappy with the action the Government was taking to fight corruption and was “grateful” to the Prime Minister for “getting Brexit done”, winning the 2019 election and “getting the country out of Covid lockdown”.

He is married to Baroness Dido Harding, the former head of NHS Test and Trace.