British PM defends handling of ethics breaches in government

LONDON — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak defended his record on integrity and decisiveness Monday, amid criticism of the way he has handled ethics scandals involving senior Conservatives.

Sunak said he acted “pretty decisively” to fire party Chairman Nadhim Zahawi on Sunday after the government’s standards adviser found he’d breached ministerial conduct rules by failing to come clean about a tax dispute.

The adviser, Laurie Magnus, found Zahawi hadn’t told the prime minister he’d settled a multimillion-dollar unpaid tax bill, and paid a penalty to the tax office, while he was in charge of the U.K. Treasury. Magnus said Zahawi’s failure to tell officials about the tax investigation was “a serious failure to meet the standards set out in the ministerial code.”

“What I have done is follow a process, which is the right process,” Sunak said Monday. “When all these questions started coming to light about Nadhim Zahawi, I asked the independent adviser to get to the bottom of it and provide me with the facts.”