Police have said no further action will be taken against Simon Brodkin, the prankster who waved a fake P45 at Theresa May during her keynote speech at the Conservative party conference.

Brodkin was tackled by security guards and dragged from the auditorium in Manchester after interrupting the prime minister’s speech on Wednesday. He was arrested for breach of the peace but released shortly afterwards, and Greater Manchester police (GMP) said no charges were being brought against him.

The serial prankster, who acts as his character Lee Nelson, is known for carrying out a series of stunts against high-profile figures in recent years. In 2015 he showered the then Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, with fake banknotes, and last year at the reopening of Donald Trump’s Turnberry golf resort in Scotland he hijacked the then US presidential candidate’s speech with golf balls emblazoned with swastikas.

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In Manchester, Brodkin caught May’s eye in the middle of her speech. She carried on speaking as he handed her the letter and told her: “Prime minister, Boris told me to give you this.” May, stumbling over a word, eventually took the letter and had to bend to put it on the floor. Brodkin then approached the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, and gave him a thumbs up, saying: “Boris, job done.”

Questions have been raised about the vetting of conference attendees after police said Brodkin had legitimate accreditation granting him access to the hall, despite being well known for such stunts. Patrick McLoughlin, chair of the Conservative party, said there would be an investigation into the security breach.

Applicants for accreditation are vetted by both CCHQ and GMP, while the private security firm G4S is in charge of security around the perimeter on the days of the conference, including looking at attendees’ passes and and carrying out “necessary checks to their person and their belongings”, a G4S spokeswoman said.

A spokesman for GMP said on Thursday that applicants applied for accreditation through the Conservative party, and these names and details were passed on to the police. The checks the force carries out are related to criminal backgrounds, such as whether an individual is known to counter-terrorism police or has been arrested in the past.

“If he’s known for being a prankster but doesn’t have a criminal record, then that wouldn’t necessarily come up on the checks that we do,” he said. “That could be something that may have come up on the Conservative party’s checks, but I don’t know the specifics of their checks. Ours is criminal and terrorism.”

A Conservative party spokesman said on Wednesday: “In light of the arrest during the prime minister’s speech, we are working with the police to review the accreditation process and security arrangements for party conference.”

Steve Park, a former police protection officer who now provides specialist training and support services to the corporate and commercial security industry, said Wednesday’s events were a failure on the part of protection officers who were in the building. “From a risk perspective, the building is fit for purpose for conferences, there was a £2m police operation in place,” Park said.

No matter how Brodkin got into the building, he said, something was “clearly wrong” with the process inside the building. “Police are ultimately responsible for what goes on, even if there is a private security company in place to do the check-in and scans,” he said.

“A couple of security personnel should have been close by, and they should have dealt with this professionally, which means removing the guy.”

But Park said he counted up to 30 seconds before any action was taken to remove Brodkin. “I was thinking what the hell is going on here? We’re not talking about anybody here, we’re talking about the government, people that, when they walk around the building, have a contingent of four or five protection staff closely guarding them in a diamond formation.”

Greg Clark, the business secretary said the breach was shocking and the party needed to investigate.



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Clark did not defend McLoughlin when asked whether the blame lay ultimately with him. “I don’t know which part of the weakness of the system it was but it clearly needs to be established,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday. “We need to look into it and find out what happened and make sure it can never happen again.”

Clark said the feeling in the cabinet was that the prime minister had dealt well with the adversity. “She made a much better joke than the prankster, saying she wanted to give Jeremy Corbyn a P45, I think that shows a dignity and command,” he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Brodkin approaches May with the P45 on Wednesday. Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images

It was the first of a series of problems during the speech for the prime minister, who also had to deal with a cough that at times left her almost unable to speak. Three-quarters of the way through the speech, letters started falling off from the slogan on the wall behind her.

During her speech, the prime minister promised to introduce a draft bill next week to give the energy regulator, Ofgem, powers to cap the bills of people on standard tariffs, whom Clark said were being punished for their loyalty.

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However, No 10 admitted later that ministers were just giving Ofgem the powers to impose a cap for everyone on a standard variable tariff, not actually ordering the regulator to impose it.

Ofgem had been expected to announce a much narrower cap this week, for 2 million of the most vulnerable households, to take effect in January. The Conservatives said the new powers would allow the regulator to go further, including potentially implement a cap on all 15m households on the standard tariff.

“This is doing the right thing. There was a two-year investigation by the independent competition authority, and they said consumers who are loyal and on the high-cost default tariffs are overpaying to the extent of £1.4bn. That is a huge amount, this is big money,” Clark told Sky News.