Almost two in three Britons want Conservative chairman Nadhim Zahawi to set out how much it took to settle his tax dispute with HMRC, a poll for The Independent has found.
Some 64 per cent of people – including 61 per cent of Tory voters – say Mr Zahawi should reveal exactly how much he handed over, according to the Savanta ComRes survey.
Only 18 per cent said he should not disclose the sums of his tax settlement, which is now subject to an investigation by Rishi Sunak’s ethics adviser.
Mr Zahawi has not yet disclosed the size of the HMRC settlement – reportedly an estimated £4.8m, including a 30 per cent penalty of around £1m. But his spokesman has not denied the reported sums.
The prime minister is facing a backlash from his own MPs over the decision to keep the Tory chairman in the cabinet, with one former minister telling The Independent it was “insanity” to leave the matter unresolved.
Another ex-minister said the prime minister risked looking “indecisive” by keeping him in post, and revealed that the “general view” of Tory colleagues was that Mr Zahawi should resign now.
“It would be much better if he stepped aside now because he’s become such a distraction. He could still come back to government if the investigation clears him,” they said.
Chris Hopkins, Savanta director, said the new polling indicates that “the Zahawi story has cut through and the longer this drags on the more damaging it will become”.
He added: “For Sunak, his aim was to distance himself from the Johnson and Truss administrations. But sleaze allegations continue to trouble the party and prime minister, piling on the pressure with little electoral room for comfort.”
Mr Sunak will come under fresh pressure today as Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is likely to seize on the fallout from Mr Zahawi’s multi-million pound settlement at PMQs.
It comes as Lord Evans, the chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, criticised the legal threats Mr Zahawi made as he tried to prevent stories about his tax affairs emerging.
The Independent – which first revealed the HMRC investigation into Mr Zahawi’s taxes – was threatened with legal action, and tax lawyer Dan Neidle was contacted by “expensive” libel lawyers.
“The sort of attempts, apparent legal attempts to suppress this story, I don’t think that does live up to the sort of standards that the public would rightly expect.”
Dominic Grieve, former Tory attorney general, said Mr Sunak did not need an investigation to answer the “obvious question” of whether he acted with integrity.
“I think that it is impossible to answer that question and to say that he did,” he told BBC Newsnight. “And if that’s the case then quite frankly the prime minister is really under a duty to tell Nadhim Zahawi he’s got to resign. And the longer he stays there, the worse it’s going to get.”
Lord Kerslake, former head of the civil service, said: “The real issue is when these questions were being raised back in July ... he could and should have been completely forthcoming on the detail. He didn’t – he threatened legal action and he closed the issue down. That is a clear conflict with the Nolan principles of openness.”
Former Tory minister David Gauke told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme it was “hard to see how this doesn’t ultimately end in [Mr Zahawi’s] resignation”. He said it would be “very uncomfortable” PMQs for Mr Sunak if he was still in post at 12pm.
And the influential Tory peer Lord Hayward said Mr Zahawi “should be considering whether he stands aside for the period of the inquiry” – warning that the saga could help “flatline” Tory popularity ahead of the local elections.
Mr Zahawi, the MP for Stratford-upon-Avon, has insisted his “error” over shares in the YouGov polling company he co-founded was “careless and not deliberate”. He has insisted he is “confident” that the investigation will find that he has “acted properly throughout”.
Labour has argued Mr Sunak should sack the chairman before the investigation’s conclusion, describing it as a “pathetic attempt to pass the buck”.
