PM's deputy Damian Green investigated over 'suggestive' text
Prime Minister Theresa May's deputy, Damian Green, is to be investigated after an allegation of inappropriate behaviour towards a female activist.
Kate Maltby wrote in the Times that he "fleetingly" touched her knee in a pub in 2015, and in 2016 sent her a "suggestive" text message.
She said he offered her career advice "and in the same breath made it clear he was sexually interested".
Mr Green has described the claims as "absolutely and completely untrue".
Ms Maltby, a writer and academic some 30 years younger than Mr Green, said he sent her the text message after she posed in a corset for the Times.
According to her article in the paper, it read: "Long time no see. But having admired you in a corset in my favourite tabloid I felt impelled to ask if you are free for a drink anytime?"
The encounters left her feeling "awkward, embarrassed and professionally compromised", she wrote, adding: "It was not acceptable to me at the time and it should not be acceptable behaviour in Westminster in the future."
The cabinet secretary is to consider whether Mr Green broke the ministerial code.
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Ms Maltby said Mr Green was at university with her mother and was "in the peripheral circle of my parents' acquaintances".
He had agreed to be interviewed by her school newspaper when she, aged 16, was the editor and he was shadow education minister, she said.
Mr Green, now first secretary of state, and Theresa May's effective deputy, said he had known Ms Maltby since 2014 and the pair "had a drink as friends twice-yearly".
He denied putting his hand on her knee.
"The text I sent after she appeared in a newspaper article was sent in that spirit - as two friends agreeing to meet for a regular catch up - and nothing more," he said.
"This untrue allegation has come as a complete shock and is deeply hurtful, especially from someone
I considered a personal friend."
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It comes as allegations and rumours relating to sexual harassment and abuse by MPs swirl around Westminster.
On Tuesday, Labour confirmed it had launched an independent inquiry into claims that activist Bex Bailey, 25, was discouraged by a party official from reporting an alleged rape at a Labour event in 2011.
She told the BBC she had waived her anonymity to urge changes to the way such cases are handled.
And earlier this week a spokesman for Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon confirmed he was once rebuked by a journalist for putting his hand on her knee during dinner.
In a separate case, an anonymous woman who claims she was sexually assaulted by an MP on a foreign work trip last year has said her allegations were not taken seriously.
The government has promised urgent action to improve the handling of complaints about the way MPs' staff are treated.
Meanwhile, the BBC has seen a list, thought to have been compiled by staff and researchers at Westminster, detailing a range of mostly unproven allegations about 40 Conservative MPs and ministers.
Among the claims are a number of serious allegations of inappropriate behaviour with junior members of staff, the use of prostitutes and affairs between MPs.
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