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BRITAIN-POLITICS-TRADE
UK minister quits over loan intimidation
LONDON, May 4, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – An ally of British Prime Minister Boris
Johnson resigned his ministerial post Monday after an inquiry found he used
his position to try to intimidate someone involved in a family dispute.
Conor Burns quit as junior international trade minister after a House of
Commons standards committee recommended he be suspended from the lower
parliamentary chamber for seven days.
Burns had used Commons stationery in February last year to write to a
person representing a company involved in a dispute with his father over the
repayment of a loan.
The MP for Bournemouth, a town on the southern English coast, suggested he
could raise the case in parliament, where anything he said would be immune to
any legal proceedings.
“Mr Burns 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,” the committee’s report states.
The commissioner for standards, Kathryn Stone, who carried out the inquiry,
said his behaviour had a wider impact than simply breaching the MPs’ code of
conduct.
It “gives fuel to the belief that members are able and willing to use the
privileges accorded them by their membership of the House to benefit their
own personal interests,” she said.
Burns was an aide to Johnson when he was foreign secretary and is also a
committed supporter of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union.
“With deep regret I have decided to resign as minister of state for
international trade,” he tweeted, saying that the premier continued to have
his “wholehearted support”.
BSS/AFP/MRU/1745hrs