DOWNING Street has admitted that Boris Johnson knew about allegations of harassment surrounding former deputy chief whip, Chris Pincher.

The confession from No 10 came after junior minister Will Quince told numerous broadcasters that he had been given "categorical assurance that the Prime Minister was not aware of any serious specific allegation."

But the Conservative leader’s official spokesman later admitted that Mr Johnson had been aware of “reports and speculation over the years with regards to this individual” when he appointed him to the whips’ office n February, but that “there were no specific allegations.”

“There was no formal complaint at that time,” the spokesman added.

Asked if the Prime Minister had investigated this speculation, his spokesman said: “I can’t get into too much detail but he did take advice on some of the allegations that had been made, but there was no formal complaint at that time and it was deemed not appropriate to stop an appointment simply because of unsubstantiated allegations.”

According to his former chief aide, Dominic Cummings, the Tory leader jokingly referred to the MP as "Pincher by name, pincher by nature".

Mr Pincher quit as the party’s deputy chief whip on Thursday, saying he had "drunk far too much" the previous evening. He was later accused of drunkenly groping two men.

After initially hoping to draw a line under the incident, No 10 was then forced to suspend the MP the next day when one of the men lodged a complaint with the Parliamentary watchdog, the Independent Complaints and Grievances Scheme.

Conservative Staffers for Change, a group of young people working in parliament for MPs, told the Times that Mr Pincher’s “behaviour was an open secret in Westminster and it is disappointing that this was not addressed sooner.”

The group, whose leading members include Oliver Briscoe, the researcher for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine MP Andrew Bowie, said they had “raised concerns about sexual misconduct with the chief whip” and were “disappointed not only by how long it took to remove the whip from Pincher, but also at the continued lack of clarity about what the PM knew.”

Mr Pincher previously stood down from the whips' office in 2017 when he was accused of making an unwanted pass at former Olympic rower and Tory activist Alex Story.

He was later cleared of any breach of the Tory party's code of conduct.

Mr Pincher released a statement at the end of last week, saying he was seeking “professional medical support” and hoped to “return to my constituency duties as soon as possible."

Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme why the Prime Minister had given Mr Pincher a job with responsibility for the behaviour of MPs, Mr Quince, a junior minister in the Department for Education said: “That is a question and one for the Prime Minister and not for me. I wasn’t in the room and not alive to the conversations.”

Asked about his own awareness of rumours about Mr Pincher, Mr Quince said: “There are a lot of rumours and gossip around Westminster… If I had a pound for every rumour that I’d heard about another MP, then I’d be a very wealthy man.”

Earlier, Mr Quince told Sky News he had “been given categorical assurance that the Prime Minister was not aware of any serious specific allegation with regards to the former deputy chief whip.”