Fox hopes for return to top office

Dr Fox, who was forced to resign over his links with his best man and self-styled adviser Adam Werritty, admitted he had broken ministerial rules.

But in an interview with BBC local radio, he said he would still like to get back to front-line politics.

“I would certainly like to get back to the front bench – how quickly is another matter,” he said.

“I think for the moment I will enjoy having a little bit of extra time. There are one or two projects that I want to get involved in on the charitable side and to devote some time to that.”

Dr Fox acknowledged that his relationship with Mr Werritty – whom he met 40 times in the Ministry of Defence and on trips abroad – had contravened Whitehall rules.

“My mistake there was to effectively allow someone to function as an independent adviser and that is not allowed under the Ministerial Code,” he said.

“I should have kept a better separation there – with hindsight, it seems easy.”

However he strongly defended his practice of arranging for time during official visits overseas to meet Mr Werritty and other friends.

“These are visits where we would regularly arrange with downtime for friends to be around and to catch up. It is not quite as dramatic as it sounds,” he said.

“I would finish Ministerial work and then we would very regularly, in places like Dubai, meet up with friends in the region. So there wasn’t any lack of separation between Ministerial and private time.”