Damian Green has said he believes he did not act inappropriately towards the Conservative activist and writer Kate Maltby in his first interview about the allegations since he was sacked from the cabinet.
Green, the former first secretary of state, said the only reason he had accepted for his dismissal was that he had been misleading in a statement about a police investigation into pornography found on his office computer.
The former cabinet minister described a text he had sent to Maltby asking her for a drink after seeing a picture of her in a corset as “a joke”. Maltby told the Cabinet Office inquiry into Green that the MP touched her knee and appeared to solicit sex from her in exchange for political mentoring.
“If she felt uncomfortable ... then obviously I’m sorry about that,” Green told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “But I should emphasise again as I have done throughout that I didn’t believe I did anything inappropriate, still don’t.”
Although the inquiry by Sue Gray, the director general of the propriety and ethics team, found Maltby to be “plausible”, Gray found one breach of the ministerial code – his outright denials when a Sunday newspaper reported that pornography had been found on his computer.
Green, a friend of Theresa May’s for 40 years, was widely viewed as the prime minister’s closest ally in government. Green said that he and the prime minister had spoken since his sacking in December. Asked if they were still friends, Green said: “Yes.”
Green said he did not intend to complain about his treatment. “I sent a press release that was inaccurate, I apologised. That was a breach of the ministerial code. That’s why I had to leave the government. I accepted that and I’m now moving on to other projects. It was one press release that went slightly too far in a very difficult time,” he said.
“I’m not going to whinge, stuff happens, move on. All ministers hold their positions at the pleasure of the prime minister and I did break the ministerial code.”
I have one response to Damian Green's interview on Today & then will get on with my day.
— KateMaltby (@KateMaltby) February 20, 2018
I said on Day 1 that I could tell DG didn't think his behaviour was wrong. That is the problem. Why we need change.
Here's what I actually wrote, to which his response was libel lawyers. pic.twitter.com/oAuXoVg1Or
Green said he was “not holding my breath” about the chance of another position in government, and said he was putting his efforts into campaigning on social care and the future of work.
“I think the only thing sensible to do in politics now is to find something else useful to do and do it, and that’s what I’m seeking to do with this project.”
The interview is Green’s second intervention after he was sacked as the prime minister’s de facto deputy. Green, who sat on the soft Brexit side of the cabinet, suggested on Monday night that attacks by Brexiters on the civil service’s economic forecasts had been misjudged.
Some pro-Brexit colleagues found it difficult to “accept evidence” of the economic risks of leaving the EU, he told Radio 4, and said the government ought to publish such analysis in full after it is produced.
“I do reject all the conspiracy theories that suggest there’s some sort of plot inside the official machine to thwart the will of the people,” he said.
