No 10 refuses to say if ethics adviser will be replaced following Lord Geidt’s resignation after being put in ‘impossible position’ – live | Politics

At the Downing Street lobby briefing the prime minister’s spokesperson said ministers would not be getting directly involved in talks to stop the rail strikes next week. The spokesperson said:

Broadly speaking, we remain of the position that it is for the unions to negotiated with their employers rather than the government stepping in, there’s no change in that approach.

Proposed legislation to enable the use of agency workers on the railways if the industrial action persists would take “weeks rather than months”, the spokesman added.

The Foreign Office has announced a fresh wave of sanctions against Vladimir Putin’s allies, including on officials involved with the “barbaric treatment of children in Ukraine”, PA Media reports. PA says:

Each individual has been dealt an asset freeze preventing them from dealing with British banks or businesses, and a ban on flying to the UK.

Those sanctioned include the Russian children’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, who has been accused of enabling 2,000 vulnerable children to be violently taken from the Donbas region for adoption in Russia.

The measures also apply to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, who supports Putin’s war, and Sergey Savostyanov, the deputy of the Moscow city Duma.

Speaking in the Commons, Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, said Patriarch Kirill has “repeatedly abused his position to justify the war”.

This is from Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, on Lord Geidt’s resignation letter.

Lord Geidt walked out because of the odious behaviour of Boris Johnson’s Downing Street. This prime minister has, in his own adviser’s words, made a mockery of the ministerial code. He has now followed both his predecessor and the anti-corruption tsar out of the door in disgust.

There are now no ethics left in this Downing Street regime propped up in office by a Conservative party mired in sleaze and totally unable to tackle the cost of living crisis facing the British people.

Did Boris Johnson deliberately provoke Lord Geidt into resigning? It is normally best to treat conspiracy theories such as this as fiction, but there is something very peculiar about the request from Johnson to Geidt that triggered his resignation. (See 12.01pm and 1.33pm.) In Downing Street they must have known that Geidt was already very close to resigning, because of Partygate. A Partygate resignation, of course, would be damaging to the prime minister. But, as the Telegraph’s Christopher Hope points out, a resignation by Geidt in opposition to a policy supported by the Labour party and designed to protect British jobs in the steel industry? Well, that’s not quite such a bad headline.

No 10 unable to explain why – in apparently unprecedented move – Geidt was asked to advise on legality of tariff policy

No 10 refuses to confirm that Johnson will appoint new ethics adviser to replace Lord Geidt

Jim Pickard from the FT says the dispute between Boris Johnson and Lord Geidt did relate to steel tariffs, as suggested by trade expert Sam Lowe. (See 12.14pm.)

The Lib Dems are saying Boris Johnson should come to parliament to explain what his dispute with Lord Geidt was about. Wendy Chamberlain, the Lib Dem chief whip, said:

The prime minister now needs to come to parliament and answer questions about these extremely serious allegations … The public is sick of the constant lies and cover-ups by Boris Johnson and the Conservatives. They deserve the full truth now.

In his resignation letter (see 11.50am) Lord Geidt says he finally decided to resign after being asked to approve a move that could be “a deliberate and purposeful breach of the ministerial code”.

But he also says by that point he was close to resignation anyway, and he says he got to this point because he was unhappy about the letter Boris Johnson sent him on 31 May in response to the publication of Geidt’s annual report.

Geidt seems to be particularly angry about the suggestion in the PM’s letter that Geidt had not been clear enough in telling Downing Street that he thought Johnson should address the issue of whether he broke the ministerial code when he gave a statement to MPs about Partygate.

Geidt says in his letter.

Your letter in response to my annual report was welcome. It addressed the absence of comment by you about your obligations under that ministerial code up until that point. You explained that, by paying a fixed-term penalty, you had not breached the ministerial code. The letter did not, however, address specifically the criticism in Sue Gray’s report about your adherence to the Nolan principles (on leadership, in particular). Neither did the letter make mention that, despite being repeatedly questioned in the House of Commons about your obligations under the ministerial code (after paying a fixed-penalty notice), your responses again made no reference to it.

I reported to the select committee yesterday that I was satisfied that you had responded to my annual report to explain your position. I am disappointed, however, that the account you gave was not fuller, as noted above. Moreover, I regret the reference to ‘miscommunication’ between our offices, with the implication that I was somehow responsible for you not being fully aware of my concerns. These inconsistencies and deficiencies notwithstanding, I believed that it was possible to continue credibly as independent adviser, albeit by a very small margin.

Lord Geidt’s resignation letter and Boris Johnson’s response are now on the Downing Street website here.

Sam Lowe, a trade expert who works for the Flint Global consultancy, has posted on Twitter about the dispute that seems to be behind Lord Geidt’s resignation.

Here is Boris Johnson’s reply to Lord Geidt in full.

The Downing Street lobby briefing is starting soon. We may get a fuller explanation there of what the WTO tariff issue was that prompted Lord Geidt’s resignation.