Rishi Sunak has rejected claims from a Tory MP that marriages between men and women are the “only possible basis for a safe and successful society”, his spokesman has said.
Danny Kruger told a conference that marriage is “a public act” that “wider society should recognise and reward”, and stressed that mothers and fathers should stay together for the sake of their children.
The Devizes MP – a former political secretary to Boris Johnson when he was prime minister – made the comments in London at the National Conservatism Conference, an event organised by a Right-wing US think tank.
Downing Street has distanced the prime minister from those remarks, the BBC reported. Mr Sunak’s spokesman said although some ministers had chosen to speak at the event that did not mean the government endorsed its agenda.
The annual conference is billed as a gathering of people who “are inextricably tied to the idea of nation” and “see national conservatism as the best path forward”.
Other Tory MPs including Suella Braverman, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Michael Gove and Miriam Cates also spoke at the event.
Who is Danny Kruger?
Danny Kruger, 48, is a Tory MP and the son of Bake Off judge Prue Leith, 82, and author Rayne Kruger, who died in 2002. He is married and has three children.
Mr Kruger attended Eton College and studied history at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Oxford.
Before becoming a politician, Mr Kruger worked at a centre-right think tank as a Conservative Party policy adviser, as a writer for the Daily Telegraph, and as David Cameron’s chief speech writer. He also co-founded Only Connect, which is a youth crime prevention charity based in London.
Mr Kruger has been a Conservative MP for Devizes in Wiltshire since 2019. He has consistently voted against measures to prevent climate change, for a stricter asylum system, and against more EU integration, according to They Work For You, which analyses how MPs vote.
The MP was fined in 2021 after losing control of his Jack Russell puppy, who chased deer in Richmond Park and caused a stampede of about 200 animals. In 2020, he was made to apologise after being photographed without a face mask on a train.
In June 2022, during a debate in the Commons about the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v Wade, he said he does not believe that women have “an absolute right to bodily autonomy”. Mr Kruger said he would “probably disagree” with his parliamentary colleagues on the ruling.
He said: “They think that women have an absolute right to bodily autonomy in this matter, whereas I think in the case of abortion that right is qualified by the fact that another body is involved.”
