A TORY minister resigned today after an investigation found that he had threatened a company chairman involved in a financial dispute with his father.

Conor Burns attempted to intimidate the man by using parliamentary privilege and continued to make “veiled threats” during the investigation, the Commons standards committee said.

The watchdog recommended that Mr Burns be suspended from Parliament for multiple breaches of the MPs’ code before Downing Street announced his resignation from the Department for International Trade.

The unnamed chairman received a letter on House of Commons paper from the Bournemouth West MP, dated February 6 2019, about the “long-standing financial dispute” with Mr Burns senior.

The MP suggested that the complainant could avoid him raising the case in the Commons by securing payment of the loan to his father.

In raising the case during parliamentary proceedings, Mr Burns would have been protected from a legal challenge by parliamentary privilege.

Parliamentary standards commissioner Kathryn Stone said that Mr Burns’s behaviour had fuelled the belief “that members are able and willing to use the privileges accorded them by their membership of the house to benefit their own personal interests.”

Factors aggravating the three breaches were Mr Burns persisting in making “ill-disguised threats” to use his position to pursue his family interest even after he had been warned that he had broken the MPs’ code, the committee said.

In a letter to the commissioner, Mr Burns said that he had written the letter because he was “very concerned” about the stress caused to his father, who is in his late 70s.

But Downing Street announced his resignation and said that a replacement would be found “in due course.”