13 April 2023 , 13:33
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Rishi Sunak refused to rule out putting Boris Johnson in his cabinet - which would mean a return to frontline politics for the disgraced ex-PM.
The PM swerved a question on whether the door was closed to Mr Johnson returning as a minister in his cabinet.
Mr Sunak said he would "rarely" ever comment on Cabinet appointments.
"You wouldn’t expect me to do that with Boris or anybody else for that matter," he told ConservativeHome's editor Paul Goodman.
"We've got a great team and they're focused on delivering. But more broadly, it's great that we've got former prime ministers who want to contribute still to public life and feel that they can do that. That's a good thing and we should welcome that."
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Boris Johnson was accused of trying to disrupt Rishi Sunak's Brexit deal so he could become PM again just a few months ago (jonathan brady PA WIRE/Getty)Just a few months ago, Mr Johnson was accused of plotting to oust Mr Sunak by trying to "cause trouble" over his new Brexit deal, the Windsor Framework.
The attention-seeking ex-PM attempted to scupper talks with Brussels on fixing his botched Brexit deal .
At the time, former Chancellor George Osborne said: “Boris Johnson is interested in becoming Prime Minister again… If you wait for Boris Johnson to do the sort of grown up sensible thing, he's not going to do it if he thinks it is a political opportunity to cause trouble.”
He added: “He wants to bring down Rishi Sunak and he will use any instrument to do it."
Should Boris Johnson be allowed to return to the Cabinet? Vote in our poll HERE to have your say.
Meanwhile during the interview, Mr Sunak was forced to admit there is little Conservative support for a planning system which imposes "top-down targets" on local areas as he defended his position on housing.
The Prime Minister last year caved in to pressure to make the target of building 300,000 homes a year in England advisory rather than mandatory.
Rishi Sunak admitted local Tory members and councillors don't want national targets on housingMr Goodman asked the PM: "You have to have sticks in the system as well as carrots which is what Conservative governments before yours laboriously built up - and then, only very recently, Conservative backbenchers drove the movement to weaken the housing targets, so fewer houses will be built - and they would say to you, as a result of those changes, will more houses really be built or fewer?"
Mr Sunak replied: "I spent the summer talking to thousands and thousands of our members, our activists, our councillors and I also heard the same message from all of them.
"People wanted to talk to me about the planning system and how it was working and I don't think there was any support for a system which imposed top-down targets on local areas without any recourse or understanding of the local circumstances."
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He insisted the Government wants to build "the right number of homes" but in "the right places" and "the right way."
“I spent a lot of the time over the summer when I was talking to so many of our members, so many of our councillors, about our planning system and their views on it.
"What I heard, consistently, particularly from our councillors and our members, was what they didn’t want was a nationally-imposed, top down set of targets imposed telling them what to do.”
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