The Daily Mail has agreed to pay £11,000 towards legal costs and remove a negative article about Kate Maltby, the writer who accused Damian Green of inappropriate behaviour.

Maltby said she would cover most of her own legal costs and had donated £5,500 to the legal fund Time’s Up, which was inspired by the #MeToo movement for women experiencing sexual harassment.

The piece, written by the Daily Mail’s Andrew Pierce, was published in the newspaper shortly after she made the allegations against Green last year and has now been removed from MailOnline. The dispute has been settled without admission of fault.

Maltby is understood to have been prepared to go to court over the claims made in the Pierce article and any court case could have involved No 10 staff and senior members of the Conservative party being called to give evidence.

Her original claim against Green, that he hinted he could advance her career in exchange for an affair, was judged “plausible” by a Cabinet Office inquiry. However, Green ultimately lost his job after admitting that he had lied about the fact that pornography was found on his parliamentary computer during a police investigation in 2008.

The inquiry also examined claims that Green or his allies influenced the Mail article, which called Maltby “one very pushy lady”. Green and his aides have strongly denied they contributed in any way to the attacks on Maltby.

In her original piece for the Times, which prompted the inquiry, Maltby said Green had fleetingly touched her knee during a meeting in a Waterloo pub in 2015 to talk about her political career, as he mentioned that his own wife was “very understanding”.

Maltby, who writes regularly for the Times, said Green also sent her a suggestive text message after she was pictured wearing a corset in the newspaper. In his resignation letter, Green said he did not recognise the events Maltby described in her article, “but I clearly made her feel uncomfortable and for this I apologise”.

Maltby told the Guardian: “Like many of the women who’ve spoken this year about abuse of power, I only felt able to speak publicly about inappropriate behaviour at Westminster because I had a strong media platform and was lucky enough to be able to afford legal representation.



“Although my payout by [DMG Media, the Mail’s owner] represents their payment towards my costs, I have decided that the money is better spent supporting women who don’t have my advantages.”

Samantha Rennie, executive director at Rosa, the UK-wide fund which manages the Time’s Up fund, welcomed Maltby’s £5,500 donation. “We can’t end the culture of impunity without generous people like Kate who inspire others to give,” she said. “Grants from the Justice and Equality Fund will be made to support organisations with a track record of success in tackling harassment and abuse, and of supporting people who have suffered it.”

Maltby said the fund would “particularly focus on those less privileged … working-class women, women of colour, and those with other intersecting disadvantages” who were less able to face the brunt of harassment in the workplace.

“It’s not enough for prominent white women to speak out against harassment from our relative safety. It is essential that we give tangible financial support to women who take greater financial risks in challenging power,” she said.