Nadine Dorries is failing to represent her constituents, Rishi Sunak has said in a rare attack on his senior Conservative colleague, who has refused to formally resign despite announcing her intention to do so almost two months ago.
The prime minister criticised the former culture secretary, who has not spoken in the Commons for more than 12 months, saying “people deserve to have an MP that represents them”.
Dorries announced on 9 June that she would “immediately” quit as MP for Mid Bedfordshire after she was denied a peerage in Boris Johnson’s resignation honours.
But she is yet to formally tender her resignation, despite a council in her own constituency demanding she do so immediately as “residents desperately need effective representation now”.
Sunak told an LBC call-in: “I think people deserve to have an MP that represents them, wherever they are.
“It’s just making sure your MP is engaging with you, representing you, whether that’s speaking in parliament or being present in their constituencies doing surgeries, answering your letters. That’s the job of an MP and all MPs should be held to that standard.”
Asked if that meant Dorries was failing her constituents, Sunak said: “Well, at the moment people aren’t being properly represented.”
In a letter to Dorries last week, Flitwick town council said “concerns and frustration about the situation” had been raised at a recent meeting, and councillors wanted her to “immediately vacate” her seat to allow a byelection.
Dorries’s delay is widely seen as an attempt to frustrate Sunak’s attempts to prepare to replace her, though she has endorsed the prospective Tory candidate Festus Akinbusoye for her seat.
Dorries had claimed she was holding on to her role as MP while she investigated why she was denied a seat in the House of Lords.
“It is absolutely my intention to resign, but given what I know to be true and the number of varying and conflicting statements issued by No 10 since the weekend, this process is now sadly necessary,” she said in a tweet in June.
The delay has left her constituents in limbo. A number of Conservative voters have criticised her record, describing her as an “absent MP who is too focused on writing books”.
After winning the selection battle to eventually replace her, Akinbusoye, currently Bedfordshire’s police and crime commissioner, said: “People in Mid Bedfordshire just want to have a member of parliament who is going to be absolutely focused, who is going to be visible, who is going to listen to them [and] who is going to make their priorities his or her priorities.”
Downing Street had previously acknowledged that it was “unusual” that Dorries had not formally resigned despite saying she would quit.
Asked if there was frustration over the delay, the prime minister’s press secretary said last month: “It’s obviously unusual to have an MP say they will resign with immediate effect and for that not to take place.”
Dorries is hosting a weekly chatshow on TalkTV and has written a book, titled The Plot: The Political Assassination Of Boris Johnson, to be published days before the Conservative party conference in September.