David Burt has confirmed he will leave the Cabinet and serve as a backbencher after his retirement as premier.

Mr Burt, who was speaking during a radio interview, further clarified recent changes to Progressive Labour Party membership.

He said complaints came to him “as leader of the party” that “persons who ran against the PLP as early as last year” were “showing up on membership lists”.

Mr Burt added: “Those concerns were brought to me and I basically said ‘OK, we need to do something about this’.

“I went to our governing body and said ‘let us make sure that we at least vet people who ran against us to see if they actually have had a conversion.”

Mr Burt was speaking during an interview with Glenn Blakeney on Magic 102.7FM yesterday afternoon.

The conversation spanned the internal election, corporate income tax and his future after ten years at the helm of the Progressive Labour Party.

His comments came after an addendum was passed to prevent people who publicly campaigned against the party in the past two general elections from automatically joining.

Mr Burt, who also serves as the Minister of Finance, said the PLP had never had a membership vetting process “for better or for worse”.

Speaking about limiting votes, he said: “That was not a motion for myself, but the reality is we govern our party and the governing body of the party said ‘those are the rules’ and that’s what’s going to happen.”

“The reality is, we live in a democratic process. If you want to be inside of a democratic process then you have to accept the results of a democratic process.”

Mr Burt denied criticisms of the vote going against the PLP’s constitution, saying the power of the central committee was outlined in the very text.

He explained: “When the conference is not meeting, the central committee is responsible for the governing of the party and may take any action which it sees fit in order to maintain the party.”

Mr Burt added: “No one’s saying they can’t be members; we’re saying that there is a process for which those matters will be reviewed.

“If it is decided that they have actually had a Damascene conversion then they will, but you can’t be upset about that.

“You can’t be upset that you were on the OBA executive last year and you don’t have an automatic right to be a PLP member.

“Do we even know if you’ve resigned your OBA membership?”

Further, Mr Burt assured the public that he would “go to Government House and resign” and “leave the Cabinet Office” on the morning of November 2.

He added that while he would still be an MP, he would move “very closely back to my constituency” and serve as a backbencher.