A former MP in Geert Wilders’s PVV party has been arrested on suspicion of breaching confidentiality while working as a police inspector.

Hero Brinkman was provisionally dismissed from the Amsterdam police force in the summer for an alleged breach of duty.

Police carried out a search of Brinkman’s home on Monday morning, the Telegraaf reported. His lawyer Richard van der Weide said he had been ‘sidelined’ by his employers.

Brinkman, 52, was a policeman before entering Parliament in 2006 and returned to the service in 2012 after losing his seat. He was one of the few members of Wilders’s party with a high personal profile until the pair fell out in the spring of 2012 in a row over the PVV’s lack of a democratic structure.

When elections were held later that year Brinkmann founded a new party, Democratisch Politiek Keerpunt, but failed to win enough votes to secure a seat.