Former Tory MP Scott Benton resigns from parliament – triggering by-election

Published

1 year ago

March 25, 2024

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A former Tory MP who was facing the prospect of being removed from his seat by voters has announced he is resigning from parliament – triggering another by-election.

Scott Benton, who represents Blackpool South, said it had been “the honour of a lifetime to represent our wonderful Blackpool community in parliament over the last four years”.

“It’s with a heavy heart that I have written to the chancellor this morning to tender my resignation as your MP,” he said in a post on X.

His resignation will trigger a by-election unless Prime Minister Rishi Sunak calls a general election sooner – something that is unlikely after he ruled out holding an election on 2 May and said he is still aiming for the second half of the year.

The by-election will be launched after MPs are asked whether they agree to it, which could be as early as tomorrow, Sky News understands. This means the contest may be held on the same day as the local elections on 2 May.

Mr Benton was elected to the Blackpool South seat in 2019 with a slim majority of 3,690 and Labour would hope to snatch it back in a by-election.

It is one of the “red wall” seats – the traditional Labour areas that switched to Boris Johnson’s Conservatives in 2019.

Mr Benton was facing a recall petition that was due to close on 22 April, after he was suspended from the Commons for 35 days over his role in a lobbying sting.

MPs approved the suspension last month without the need for a vote.

Mr Benton, who has been sitting as an independent, could have been forced out by voters had 10% of his constituents signed the recall petition that was generated following his suspension.

He has now announced he will quit parliament rather than wait for the petition’s outcome.

The outgoing MP had the Tory whip removed last April after suggesting to undercover reporters at The Times that he would be willing to break lobbying rules for money.

A subsequent investigation by parliament’s Standards Committee found he had committed a “very serious breach” of the rules and recommended a 35-day suspension from the Commons.

Mr Benton then appealed the decision, but it was dismissed by the Independent Expert Panel, the body that sits above the committee.

Labour’s shadow paymaster general Jonathan Ashworth said the MP should have resigned “much sooner”, telling broadcasters: “It’s absolute chaos in the Tory party today. A divided party, divided from top to bottom, and weak leadership under Rishi Sunak.

“We need this by-election now, as soon as possible. The Tories should move the writ and let’s get on and let’s elect a Labour MP who can represent the people of Blackpool here in the House of Commons.”

The by-election will be the 23rd contest that has taken place this parliament and follows on from the most recent contest in Rochdale, which was won by left-wing firebrand George Galloway last month.

Earlier this month, Mr Sunak ruled out holding a general election on 2 May following speculation he could choose to go to the polls early.

The prime minister previously said it was his “working assumption” that an election would be held in the second half of this year but he had not previously ruled out a May date.

Politics

Crypto regulation needs more technologists and fewer suits

Published

2 hours ago

June 16, 2025

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Crypto regulation needs more technologists and fewer suits

The crypto community is missing the opportunity to reimagine rather than transpose rulemaking for financial services. More technologists must join the regulatory conversation.

Politics

Whitehall officials tried to cover up grooming scandal in 2011, Dominic Cummings says

Published

2 hours ago

June 16, 2025

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Whitehall officials tried to cover up grooming scandal in 2011, Dominic Cummings says

Whitehall officials tried to convince Michael Gove to go to court to cover up the grooming scandal in 2011, Sky News can reveal.

Dominic Cummings, who was working for Lord Gove at the time, has told Sky News that officials in the Department for Education (DfE) wanted to help efforts by Rotherham Council to stop a national newspaper from exposing the scandal.

In an interview with Sky News, Mr Cummings said that officials wanted a “total cover-up”.

Politics latest: Grooming gangs findings unveiled

The revelation shines a light on the institutional reluctance of some key officials in central government to publicly highlight the grooming gang scandal.

In 2011, Rotherham Council approached the Department for Education asking for help following inquiries by The Times. The paper’s then chief reporter, the late Andrew Norfolk, was asking about sexual abuse and trafficking of children in Rotherham.

The council went to Lord Gove’s Department for Education for help. Officials considered the request and then recommended to Lord Gove’s office that the minister back a judicial review which might, if successful, stop The Times publishing the story.

Lord Gove rejected the request on the advice of Mr Cummings. Sources have independently confirmed Mr Cummings’ account.

Mr Cummings told Sky News: “Officials came to me in the Department of Education and said: ‘There’s this Times journalist who wants to write the story about these gangs. The local authority wants to judicially review it and stop The Times publishing the story’.

“So I went to Michael Gove and said: ‘This council is trying to actually stop this and they’re going to use judicial review. You should tell the council that far from siding with the council to stop The Times you will write to the judge and hand over a whole bunch of documents and actually blow up the council’s JR (judicial review).’

“Some officials wanted a total cover-up and were on the side of the council…

“They wanted to help the local council do the cover-up and stop The Times’ reporting, but other officials, including in the DfE private office, said this is completely outrageous and we should blow it up. Gove did, the judicial review got blown up, Norfolk stories ran.”

The judicial review wanted by officials would have asked a judge to decide about the lawfulness of The Times’ publication plans and the consequences that would flow from this information entering the public domain.

A second source told Sky News that the advice from officials was to side with Rotherham Council and its attempts to stop publication of details it did not want in the public domain.

One of the motivations cited for stopping publication would be to prevent the identities of abused children entering the public domain.

There was also a fear that publication could set back the existing attempts to halt the scandal, although incidents of abuse continued for many years after these cases.

Sources suggested that there is also a natural risk aversion amongst officials to publicity of this sort.

Read more on grooming gangs:
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A timeline of the scandal

Mr Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and was Boris Johnson’s right-hand man in Downing Street, has long pushed for a national inquiry into grooming gangs to expose failures at the heart of government.

He said the inquiry, announced today, “will be a total s**tshow for Whitehall because it will reveal how much Whitehall worked to try and cover up the whole thing.”

He also described Mr Johnson, with whom he has a long-standing animus, as a “moron’ for saying that money spent on inquiries into historic child sexual abuse had been “spaffed up the wall”.

Asked by Sky News political correspondent Liz Bates why he had not pushed for a public inquiry himself when he worked in Number 10 in 2019-20, Mr Cummings said Brexit and then COVID had taken precedence.

“There are a million things that I wanted to do but in 2019 we were dealing with the constitutional crisis,” he said.

The Department for Education and Rotherham Council have been approached for comment.