As fresh allegations emerged about Pincher, who stepped down as deputy captain over allegations he groped two men in a London club, the No 10 continued to insist Johnson was not aware of any “specific” warnings until last week. However, a whip’s office source admitted on Sunday that an “issue” about Pincher had indeed been raised with them during the February reshuffle. The source had previously denied receiving any complaints or warnings – formal or informal – about his behaviour. Johnson is likely to face questions in parliament this week about what he knew about the allegations about Pincher, after five further reports of alleged misconduct over the weekend, including groping Tory MPs. Pincher denies all the charges against him. The warning to the whip’s office in February is believed to have come from a Tory MP who was the subject of a spam card from Pincher. A second MP told the Guardian they had raised allegations of sexual harassment by Pincher with their whip, but without making a formal complaint because he was not a personal victim. He said he had told the whips’ office in February that Pincher should not be on the job because he could not be trusted by young male staff. “I told a whip what I thought of Pincher and that he had a terrible reputation with junior staff and MPs who hadn’t left. That’s still true.” The deputy said they had not made a specific allegation because that would result in a full investigation and he could not guarantee that accusers would come forward. “I would not have wanted to have done this without the victim’s express permission. But I wanted them to know there were claims out there.” A third MP said they had warned senior party figures that “Pincher should not be anywhere near the whip’s office”, let alone in the deputy’s role with responsibility for MPs’ welfare as well as discipline. There were also reports that Steve Barclay, Johnson’s chief of staff, tried to block Pincher’s appointment and called for an investigation by the Cabinet Office’s fitness and ethics team. A group of parliamentary aides, called Conservative Staffers for Change, which previously wrote to Johnson with their general concerns about sexual misconduct in Westminster, said on Sunday that the stories now coming out about Pincher were “not surprising”. “His behavior has been an open secret at Westminster and it is disappointing that it was not dealt with sooner,” they said. “Having raised concerns about sexual harassment with the chief whip, we were disappointed not only by the time it took to remove the whip from Pincher, but also by the continued lack of clarity about the Prime Minister’s knowledge of his behaviour. “We wrote the letter to the Prime Minister expressing concerns about illegal sexual abuse [by those in power abusing their positions] in May, but received no response. This is about more than just the culture at Westminster, it is about the Prime Minister’s failure to act on warnings of serious misconduct by those in government.” The two MPs representing the group are due to meet Lindsey Hoyle, the Speaker, this week to “raise our concerns about parliament as a workplace and how our employment structures can be reformed”. Conservative MPs have also raised concerns with their whips about why the party refused to take any allegations about Pincher seriously without a formal complaint from an alleged victim to the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme. Anne Milton, the former deputy leader of the Conservatives, told the Guardian: “I feel very angry that in this day and age this kind of behavior goes on… Victims will come forward if they trust the process and the person who is going to . This person need not be in the whip office, just a senior person with responsibility. And absolutely witnesses should be able to file complaints. It’s nonsense to have a system without it.” Senior Tories remain adamant that Tory MP Craig Whittaker resigned as whip in February over pending harassment allegations against Pincher, despite Whittaker’s denials. Whittaker, the Calder Valley MP, issued a statement to the Halifax Courier on Sunday saying he had resigned as whip for health reasons and not because he opposed Pincher’s appointment, as he claimed on Saturday. But a senior Tory source said: “There is no doubt that Craig was concerned about Pincher taking on a key role that gave him power over younger MPs, he told people that was the reason. “Are we really to believe that this was not then passed on to the prime minister? It stretches the limits of credibility.” Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST Another junior Tory peer said: “There have been persistent rumors about Chris and how he behaves when he’s drunk, but there are persistent rumors about most people in parliament and if you believed them all we wouldn’t have MPs. “So I was wary of him, but I didn’t fully believe those rumors because I hadn’t met anyone who said they’d seen him grope anyone or been applauded. Now of course I say to myself, “should I have said something before?”. But the reality is that it takes one complaint for more complaints to come out.” Pincher suspended the whip, but Johnson initially resisted the move until a formal complaint was made about him by a victim to the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme.
