Home Secretary Amber Rudd denies Tory Government on verge of collapse over sexual misconduct scandals

Senior Conservative insists Theresa May's administration will not be brought down by string of allegations facing MPs

Home Secretary Amber Rudd has denied the Government is on the verge of collapse over the sexual misconduct allegations currently engulfing Westminster.

Asked by the BBC’s Andrew Marr if the fallout threatens to bring down Theresa May’s administration, Ms Rudd said: “Absolutely not. I think it is something that will take place, in terms of clearing out Westminster of that sort of behaviour, and Westminster, including the Government, will be better off after it. It will be a positive thing.”

Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon has resigned, and de facto Deputy Prime Minister Damian Green is under fire over a number of allegations he has denied.

Former Independent on Sunday journalist Jane Merrick revealed in the The Observer on Sunday morning that she had contacted No 10 earlier this week to tell them Sir Michael had “lunged” at her after a working lunch 14 years ago. Ms Rudd called Sir Michael’s behaviour “completely disgusting”.

Ms Rudd confirmed the ongoing inquiry into Mr Green’s conduct had been widened to look at fresh allegations that appeared in the The Sunday Times, which claimed that pornography was found on a laptop in his office when it was raided by counter terrorism police in 2008.

Ms Rudd said: “I know that the Cabinet Office is going to be looking at this tomorrow along with the wider inquiry about Damian, and I do think that we shouldn’t rush to allege anything until that inquiry has taken place.”

Earlier in the programme, prominent Tory backbencher Anna Soubry said the inquiry into Mr Green should be allowed to run its course, and that “trial by newspaper” was not the way to go about it.

“What we are having in relation to Damian, who I said should have been suspended so there was a proper inquiry, this would have formed part of that inquiry, and instead we are pretty much having trial by the newspapers. And this is not acceptable,” she said.

Mr Green has also been accused by journalist Kate Maltby, who is 30 years his junior, of touching her knee under the table in a restaurant and sending her a sexually suggestive text message.

Anonymous friends of Mr Green have briefed the media with the suggestion that Ms Maltby mistook his hand for a tablecloth. Mr Green has called Ms Maltby’s claims “categorically untrue” and also said the allegations of pornography are untrue and from “a discredited source”.

Ms Rudd was asked whether the attempts to discredit Ms Maltby, who was also the subject of unsparing attacks in the Daily Mail, would frighten other people off from coming forward.

Ms Rudd said: “Men and women who have been subject to any sort of abuse of power should have the confidence to come forward, but people who think they have been wrongly accused should be able to come out and say this is not true. And Damian has made some strong pronouncements on that.”

Ms Rudd also denied suggestions, made by former Conservative whips, that party whips regularly keep damaging information on their MPs secret in order to compel them to vote how they want them to, rather than report it to Commons authorities, or to the police.

She told Marr: “There was no black book. I was a whip myself. I don’t recognise some of those more lurid stories about the way whips operate.”

Marr repeated claims once made by the Tory whip Tim Fortescue, who served in Ted Heath’s government in the 1970s, in which he said whips would be “very accommodating” in solving MP’s personal problems, because it would leave them “in our debt”.

“It might be debt,” he said. “It might be a scandal involving small boys. We would do everything we can to help because they are in our debt.”

Ms Rudd said: “That is in the past. I want us to work in a workplace where men and women respect each other.”