Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg has said he believes the Prime Minister has broken the ministerial code and accused him of failing to answer key questions.

Speaking on GB News, Sir Jacob said: “Starmer is not holding himself to the standard to which he tried to hold Boris Johnson. And there seems to be a stench of hypocrisy around this as he fails to answer key questions.

“And what are those questions that are remaining? Well, first of all, the David Davis one: Sir Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary the panjandrum’s panjandrum, advised the Prime Minister in writing to have the vetting done before the appointment was made of a political candidate.

“Starmer didn’t do that, leaving poor old Olly Robbins, for whom I find myself surprised to feel sympathy, in the difficult position as a newly appointed permanent secretary, facing the choice either of clearing somebody who wasn’t fit to be cleared, or kiboshing the Prime Minister’s pet project…

“Question Two was a question that came from Kemi Badenoch: why didn’t the Prime Minister correct the record on Wednesday of last week? The ministerial code is absolutely clear; that you have an obligation to correct the record if you have inadvertently misled the house as soon as possible.

“He knew on Tuesday night and on Wednesday, he came to the house as if nothing had happened. That seems to me to be a breach of the ministerial code, for which he has no answer, and from which there is a further question.

“Would he have come to the house today if the Guardian hadn’t got the story about the failure of the developed vetting of Peter Mandelson? I very much doubt he would have done.

“And the other question is that he kept on saying that Mandelson lied to him, and that had he known what he knows now, had he known about the developed vetting, he wouldn’t have appointed him at the time.

“But can we believe this? Because this comes down to the process point. You know, he is Mr Process. He is Sir Keir Process. And yet, he was in the position of pushing through the appointment before the vetting had been completed.

“Now how can you say you wouldn’t have appointed him had the vetting failed if you don’t actually give the time for the vetting to fail? It implies that you don’t care whether the vetting is positive or negative, because you’ve already made your mind up, and your civil servants are merely facilitating that.

“But there is one great constitutional point of which too little has been made, in my view, and that is ministerial responsibility. As a schoolboy, when I learned about the Constitution, it was after 1954 and the Critchel Down affair when Sir Thomas Dugdale resigned. Why?

“Because something went wrong in his department. Did he squeal and say, my civil servants failed me? No. Did he know anything about the specific circumstances that led to his resignation? No.

“He resigned because he accepted the point that if you are in charge of a department, if you are in charge of a government and it all goes wrong, you take responsibility.

“Starmer squeals away from that as if he were a greased pig. It is an unpleasant and unsavoury image, though the sausages that could be made for it may be very savoury.”