5 May 2020 12:00 am
UK, (rt.com), 4 May, 2020 - Tory UK Trade Minister Conor Burns has quit from the government after a Commons watchdog recommended he serve a seven-day suspension for abusing his parliamentary privilege in an attempt to intimidate a member of the public.
Burns – a close political ally and friend of British PM Boris Johnson – was found to have used House of Commons note paper to write to an individual who was in dispute with the Conservative MP’s father over the repayment of a loan. An investigation by the Commons Standards Commissioner, Kathryn Stone, revealed that Burns warned the individual that he could raise the personal matter in Parliament.
The Bournemouth West MP was appointed as trade policy minister by the prime minister in July last year.
Responding to Stone’s investigation, the Commons Committee on Standards said the MP had “used his parliamentary position in an attempt to intimidate a member of the public into doing as Mr Burns wished, in a dispute relating to purely private family interests which had no connection with Mr Burns’ parliamentary duties.”