The TV producer Daisy Goodwin has accused the Conservative London mayoral candidate Daniel Korski of groping her in Downing Street a decade ago.
Goodwin, 61, wrote in the Times that Korski had put his hand on her breast during a meeting at Downing Street. At the time he was a special adviser to David Cameron.
A spokesperson for Korski, 46, said: “In the strongest possible terms, Dan categorically denies any allegation of inappropriate behaviour whatsoever.”
Goodwin had visited Downing Street and met Korski to discuss a possible TV project. She wrote that she found his behaviour during the meeting “odd” and said “it was not a particularly fruitful discussion”.
She wrote: “When we both stood up at the end of the meeting and went to the door, the spad [special adviser] 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 Eighties 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.”
Goodwin first went public about the incident in 2017 but she did not name Korski at the time. She wrote she was naming him now because “if this is a pattern of behaviour, then the people of London deserve to know”.
Korski left a Conservative Environment Network husting early on Monday evening.
He is one of the three shortlisted Tory London mayoral candidates, along with Susan Hall and Mozammel Hossain, competing to challenge Sadiq Khan next May.
Korski is an entrepreneur who runs his own tech company. He has been campaigning to “digitise public services and make them more efficient” and said he wanted to “use tech talent and services from the private sector to improve public services”.
