{"id":101067,"date":"2020-05-04T14:26:16","date_gmt":"2020-05-04T13:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/?p=101067"},"modified":"2020-05-04T14:26:40","modified_gmt":"2020-05-04T13:26:40","slug":"trade-minister-resigns-after-attempt-to-intimidate-member-of-public","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/trade-minister-resigns-after-attempt-to-intimidate-member-of-public\/","title":{"rendered":"Trade Minister Resigns After &#8216;Attempt To Intimidate Member Of Public&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Conservative minister Conor Burns resigns from his duties after standards regulators found that he attempted to intimidate a member of the public.<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The House of Commons standards committee has came to the conclusion that he had violated standards in regards to threatening a member of the public over a debt dispute relating to the ministers father. He threatened a use of his parliamentary privileges, not with violence.<\/p>\n<p>There was a recommendation that he should be suspended from the House of Commons for 7 days, but he announced his resignation on Twitter.<\/p>\n<div class='besclwp-iframe-outer'>\n<div class='besclwp-iframe Twitter'>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">With deep regret I have decided to resign as Minister of State for International Trade. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BorisJohnson?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@BorisJohnson<\/a> will continue to have my wholehearted support from the backbenches.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Conor Burns (@ConorBurnsUK) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ConorBurnsUK\/status\/1257255400929480704?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 4, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The House of Commons standards committee, in its conclusions, said: &#8220;The committee&#8217;s overall conclusion is that Mr\u00a0Burns\u00a0used his parliamentary position in an attempt to intimidate a member of the public into doing as Mr\u00a0Burns\u00a0wished, in a dispute relating to purely private family interests which had no connection with Mr\u00a0Burns&#8217; parliamentary duties, that he persisted in making veiled threats to use parliamentary privilege to further his family&#8217;s interests even during the course of the commissioner&#8217;s investigation, and that he misleadingly implied that his conduct had the support of the House authorities.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The committee considers that Mr\u00a0Burns&#8217; abuse of his privileged status in an attempt to intimidate a member of the public calls for a sanction more severe than apology.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It recommends that Mr\u00a0Burns\u00a0should be suspended from the service of the House for seven days.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A Downing Street spokesman said: &#8220;Conor Burns has resigned as Minister of State for International Trade following a report from the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A replacement will be announced in due course.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Conservative minister Conor Burns resigns from his duties after standards regulators found that he attempted to intimidate a member of the public. The House of Commons standards committee has came to the conclusion that he had violated standards in regards to threatening a member of the public over a debt dispute relating to the ministers&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":101106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[71,1253,101,43],"class_list":["post-101067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uk-news","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-uk","tag-uk-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101067"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101107,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101067\/revisions\/101107"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}