The government’s former anti-corruption champion has said Boris Johnson must find a new ethics adviser to replace Lord Geidt, who resigned from his post earlier this week after being put in an “impossible and odious” position.
John Penrose, who quit his own role earlier this month over the prime minister’s response to the Partygate scandal, made the comment after reports suggested that Lord Geidt will not be replaced.
“You can’t just pretend it doesn’t matter, and that there’s no job to be done,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Referring the unfinished investigation into the Downing Street flat renovations, Mr Penrose added that it is important not to leave “really quite damaging questions dangling”.
Lord Geidt became the second ethics adviser to resign in less than two years under Mr Johnson, with the Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL) warning the PM not to go ahead with plans to replace the high-profile adviser with an anonymous committee of officials to oversee the ministerial code of conduct.
Scrapping the adviser’s post would be “a backwards step” which would “risk further damage to public perceptions of standards”, said CSPL chair Lord Evans.
