The fallout from Nadhim Zahawi’s sacking on Sunday morning is continuing, with new questions surrounding what prime minister Rishi Sunak knew and when.
The Conservative party chair and cabinet office minister was removed from government after he was found to have broken the ministerial code on several occasions regarding the disclosure of an ongoing HMRC investigation into his tax affairs.
A report from independent ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus to this effect was delivered to the prime minister at 7.00 am on Sunday following a six-day-long inquiry. At 8.57 am, it was publicly announced that Mr Zahawi, who the PM had defended in parliament less than a fortnight before, had been sacked.
Sir Laurie said Mr Zahawi’s “delay in correcting an untrue public statement”, denying he was aware of an investigation, was “inconsistent with the requirement for openness” by ministers.
On Sky News this morning, health minister Helen Whately was asked repeatedly whether the prime minister had been informed about the investigation into Mr Zahawi before he appointed the former vaccines minister as party chair.
Ms Whately confirmed that Mr Zahawi’s lack of transparency was one of the reasons for his sacking yesterday.
She said: “The prime minister didn’t know about the things that have come out”.
She added that the prime minister is “determined to make sure there is integrity, accountability and professionalism in his government. That’s why when things like this [happen] there is a fair and due process followed. So that is being followed in this circumstance, … the prime minister got the report on Nadhim Zahawi’s behaviour and made a very rapid and decisive decision to remove him from government”.
Ms Whately was also asked whether Mr Zahawi should have the whip removed. She responded: “Well, he’s been fired from government, this is a very serious consumed because he didn’t comply with the ministerial code, but he was still elected to be an MP”.
Asked whether she was happy with Mr Zahawi “still being a Conservative”, Ms Whately said, “I’m happy with the decision the prime minister has made”.
“Clearly, as set out by the independent ethics adviser, it was very serious what he had—or in fact hadn’t—set out, but I also have worked alongside him in the department for heath during the pandemic, I know what a fantastic job he did [with the vaccine rollout]. … I’m really grateful for making that happen”, she added.
Amid some grumbles from Mr Zahawi’s allies that the former party chair should not have been sacked so quickly, Ms Whately said: ‘[the prime minister] followed a fair process, Sir Laurie Magnus looked into it, he set out in his letter very clearly what did or didn’t happen and that was the basis on which the Prime Minister removed Nadhim Zahawi from office.”
Reports suggest that Mr Zahawi is personally aggrieved by his sacking and may publish a formal response to the findings of the independent ethics adviser.
In the wake of the Zahawi affair, Anneliese Dodds, the Labour Party chair, accused Rishi Sunak of propping up a “rogue’s gallery” of ministers following the sacking of Nadhim Zahawi.
She told the BBC Radio 4 “Today” programme that Labour has written to the Prime Minister to ask when he found out about the HMRC investigation into the former Conservative Party chairman, adding that the PM “needed a backbone” and should have sacked Mr Zahawi earlier because “the facts were clear”.
She said: “There are serious questions for Rishi Sunak to answer. What did he know about the investigation into Nadhim Zahawi, the amount of money he had paid in unpaid tax and the penalty he had to pay?”.
