Tory MP resigns from Boris Johnson’s government ‘for personal reasons’

Conservative party leader Boris Johnson and Simon Clarke MP speak to a steelworker during a visit to Guisborough, North Yorkshire. Photograph: Ian Forsyth/PA. - Credit: PA

A Tory minister has announced he is stepping down from government due to ‘personal reasons’.

Simon Clarke, the minister for regional growth and local government, said his decision was due to ‘purely personal reasons’.

The MP announced his decision in a letter to the prime minister at lunchtime, before posting the document as a statement on Twitter.

He explained: ‘Like all of us I have to balance my own life against the demands of office.

‘I would not have made this decision unless I believed it was of the utmost importance.’

Clarke said it was an ‘enormous honour’ to have served in government, ‘but all the more so to have had the chance to do so at the request of a prime minister I admire very deeply and to deliver an agenda in which I believe passionately.’

Before joining the communities department the MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland worked as a Treasury minister.

Luke Hall MP will become his replacement.