A senior civil servant claims Gavin Williamson told them to ‘slit your throat’ in what they felt was a campaign of bullying
In an interview this morning Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, said the House of Lords should be reformed. He was speaking in response to questions prompted by a story claiming that Boris Johnson wants to include two young political aides on the list of people getting peerages in his resignation honours.
Stride told Times Radio:
If your question is does the … House of Lords need reform? I think absolutely. Not least to the point you’re making: its size, which has now grown to, I think, over 800 members, which is larger than the Chinese Communist party’s central committee. I do think there is scope for change, but it is one of those things that has been very difficult to get political consensus on.
Kempsell, a former journalist, recently stepped down as the Conservative party’s political director. Owen, who graduated from university in 2015, had been a parliamentary assistant to Sir Jake Berry, the former party chairman, and Johnson before joining the No 10 policy unit last year. She later worked jointly for Liz Truss and Wendy Morton, at that time the chief whip.
The government’s failure to abide by the rules it has set itself is not only a dereliction of duty nationally, which is likely to trigger an investigation by the Office of Environmental Protection, but it is also an international embarrassment.
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