FOREIGN Office minister Zac Goldsmith has resigned from Government just one day after he was named in a damning report as possibly being guilty of contempt of parliament.
A close ally and friend of the disgraced former prime minister Boris Johnson, Goldsmith was listed as one of the Tories who had looked to undermine the work of the Privileges Committee and it looked at whether Johnson had deliberately misled parliament.
Reports, which were later confirmed by the Prime Minister, suggested Goldsmith quit after being asked to apologise for attacking the committee.
But in his resignation letter, Goldsmith, who was given a peerage by Johnson, claimed he was quitting due to the UK Government's “apathy” towards environmental issues.
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Writing to Rishi Sunak, he accused the Prime Minister directly of being “simply uninterested” in climate commitments.
Goldsmith wrote: "The UK has visibly stepped off the world stage and withdrawn our leadership on climate and nature. Too often we are simply absent from key international fora.
"Only last week you seemingly chose to attend the party of a media baron rather than attend a critically important environment summit in Paris that ordinarily the UK would have co-led."
It has been a privilege to have been able to make a difference to a cause I have been committed to for as long as I remember. But this govt’s apathy in the face of the greatest challenge we face makes continuing in my role untenable. Reluctantly I am therefore stepping down pic.twitter.com/KDJKN3i6ER
— Zac Goldsmith (@ZacGoldsmith) June 30, 2023
The Tory peer further said he was “horrified” that key animal welfare commitments have also been abandoned, such as the Kept Animals Bill.
Goldsmith wrote: “Prime Minister, having been able to get so much done previously, I have struggled even to hold the line in recent months.
“The problem is not that the Government is hostile to the environment, it is that you, our Prime Minister, are simply uninterested. That signal, or lack of it, has trickled down through Whitehall and caused a kind of paralysis.”
The peer made no mention of the Privileges Committee report in which he was named for retweeting a post calling their inquiry a witch hunt and kangaroo court.
He wrote: “Exactly this. There was only ever going to be one outcome and the evidence was totally irrelevant to it."
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The report noted that "imputations 'that a member nominated to a select committee would not be able to act impartially in that service' are included among those contempts" listed in Erskine May.
Goldsmith was made a life peer by Johnson after he lost his seat as an MP in the 2019 General Election.
In a letter responding to his resignation, Prime Minister Sunak opened by referencing the committee report, before arguing that the UK had not abandoned its climate obligations.
"You were asked to apologise for your comments about the Privileges Committee as we felt they were incompatible with your position as a Minister Of the Crown. You have decided to take a different course," the Tory leader wrote.
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