No 10 insists it is ‘safe environment for women’ following groping claim

Downing Street insisted No 10 was a safe environment for women following claims former aide Daniel Korski groped TV producer and screenwriter Daisy Goodwin in the building around a decade ago.

At the time of the allegations, Mr Korski was a special adviser to then-prime minister David Cameron, and the Conservative Party said it “does not conduct investigations where the party would not be considered to have primary jurisdiction”.

Downing Street refused to be drawn on the individual case or whether there would be a Cabinet Office investigation into Mr Korski, who is now seeking to be the Tory candidate for London mayor.

But asked if Mr Sunak believes No 10 is a safe environment for women, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “Yes.”

Asked if Mr Sunak thought it was important that allegations of harassment should be investigated, the spokesman said: “Without wanting to be drawn into specifics, I think in any walk of life, I think the Prime Minister would expect that to be the case.”

A Tory spokesman said: “The Conservative Party has an established code of conduct and formal processes where complaints can be made in confidence.

“The party considers all complaints made under the Code of Conduct but does not conduct investigations where the Party would not be considered to have primary jurisdiction over another authority.”

Mr Korski “categorically denies any allegation of inappropriate behaviour”, according to his spokesman.

Ms Goodwin, who was behind the hit TV show Victoria,  used articles in The Times and Daily Mail to name Mr Korski, a former special adviser or “spad” in Whitehall slang.

In The Times she wrote that at the end of a meeting “the spad stepped towards me and suddenly put his hand on my breast”.

“Astonished, I said loudly, ‘Are you really touching my breast?’ The spad sprang away from me and I left.

“Although I suppose legally his action could be called sexual assault, I have to say that I did not feel frightened.

“I was older, taller and very possibly wiser than the spad, and having worked for the BBC in the 80s I knew how to deal with gropers.

“What I felt was surprise and some humiliation.

“I was a successful award-winning TV producer with 40 or so people working for me; this was not behaviour that I would have tolerated in my office.

“By the time I got back to work I had framed it as an anecdote about the spad who groped me in No 10.

“His behaviour was so bizarre that I couldn’t help seeing the humour in it.

“It was as if I had walked into Carry On Downing Street.”

A spokesperson for Mr Korski said: “In the strongest possible terms, Dan categorically denies any allegation of inappropriate behaviour whatsoever.”

This is not the first time Ms Goodwin has spoken about the incident, but she said that she now wanted to name Mr Korski given the fact he was in the running to become the Conservative mayoral candidate.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said Mr Korski has “clearly got to answer” questions about his alleged behaviour.

“I know very little of the detail here, other than I’ve seen the awful allegations,” Sir Keir told the New Statesman’s Politics Live Conference in central London on Tuesday.

“He has clearly got to answer those allegations, as far as I’m concerned.

“I think there will be a level of concern that yet again it is a sort of pattern of behaviour in politics.”