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Government of SM
The government’s highest-ranking lawyer has become the sixth top official to resign this year.
Jonathan Jones, permanent secretary of the Government Legal Department, resigned and will step down in April at the end of his five-year term.
Permanent secretaries head government departments and are among the highest-ranking public officials.
A spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office confirmed that Sir Jonathan had resigned, but did not comment further.
Sir Jonathan, who is QC, was knighted in December 2019 for his legal services to the government. The honor recognized his work on constitutional issues and the EU Withdrawal Agreement.
Resignation
In reporting the news of Sir Jonathan’s resignation, the Financial Times attributed the move to “suggestions that Boris Johnson is trying to backtrack on parts of last year’s Brexit deal related to Northern Ireland.”
He added that people “close to Sir Jonathan said he was ‘very unhappy’ with the decision to overwrite parts of the Northern Ireland protocol, part of the 2019 withdrawal agreement, with new powers in the Kingdom’s internal market bill. United”.
The government has denied that its plans for new post-Brexit customs deals “break” the deal reached between the UK and the EU last year.
In response to Sir Jonathan’s resignation, the shadow attorney general Lord Falconer said he was “an impressive lawyer and a loyal official”.
“If he can’t stay in public service, there must be something very rotten in this government. This resignation indicates that high-ranking government attorneys think the government is about to break the law.”
Sir Jonathan is the latest high-ranking government figure to step down.
In early September, Simon Case was appointed cabinet secretary and head of the civil service, after his predecessor, Sir Mark Sedwill, resigned.
His departure follows reports of tensions between him and key members of Boris Johnson’s team.
Furthermore, the government has faced opposition from the civil service union to its plan to bring many more officials back to their Whitehall offices.
