Key events
Chris Bryant, the Labour chair of the Commons standards committee (and chair of the privileges committee until he stood aside for this inquiry, because of his previous comments about Boris Johnson), says people made sacrifices during the pandemic because they felt we were all in this together. That is why they feel so strongly about this, he says.
He defends the committee’s conclusion that Johnson would have deserved a 90-day suspension if he were still an MP.
He says the closest precedent he could find was Sir Michael Grylls, a Tory involved in the cash for questions scandal in the 1990s. He says Grylls had stood down by the time the parliamentary inquiry into him was over. But the committee said that, if he were still an MP, he should be suspended for a substantial period, “augmented to take account of his deceit”.
Boris Johnson-defending Tory Lia Nici rejects suggestion that he lied to her too
Sir Jake Berry, a former Tory chair and another supporter, intervenes on Lia Nici. He says Boris Johnson is being criticised for how people interpreted the assurances he gave to MPs, not for what he actually said.
Nici agrees.
She says the report was not written in an impartial way.
She says there is no evidence in the report saying people told Johnson about parties taking place in the building.
Johnson is not the caretaker of the building, she says. It was not his job to go around the building seeing what people were doing.
She says No 10 is full of police officers. If rules were being broken, that would have been reported to him, she says.
Jess Phillips (Lab) asks Nici if she has considered that Johnson might have lied to her.
MPs laugh at that.
Nici says she does not think that is the case. She is a good judge of character, she claims.
She says the opposition to Johnson is being led by people who want “a formidable opponent out of their way”.
In the Commons Lia Nici (Con) is speaking now. She is the first MP to defend Boris Johnson.
She says she has read the whole report, and cannot see any evidence that Johnson misled MPs, recklessly or deliberately.
She also says she used to be Johnson’s parliamentary private secretary.
An SNP MP intervenes to gell Nici “there is none so blind as those who will not see”.
Nici says, when Johnson told MPs the rules were followed, he was repeating the advice he had been given.
She says many of the people who gave that advice are still working in Westminster, but that we do not know how those people are because they are not well known.
Dame Angela Eagle (Lab) is speaking now. She says the privileges committee discharged its duties with honour. MPs should support them. But “the Boris Johnson-worshipping print and TV media” has traduced them, egged on by Johnson himself, she says.
She says MPs who have condemned the committee as a “kangaroo court” have committed a contempt of parliament.
A reader asks:
Can you give us an estimate of how full the chamber is?
A colleague who has been watching from the press gallery (I’m watching on TV) says the Labour benches are fairly full. There are fewer Tory MPs in the chamber (several dozen?), but still more than you might expect for business on a one-line whip.
Dame Andrea Leadsom, the Tory former leader of the Commons, says she will be supporting the motion tonight.
She urges all MPs to approve the motion without a division.
Harman ended her speech by playing to tribute to the role of the media in this affair, and particulary to the work done by Pippa Crerar, the former Daily Mirror political editor who is now political editor at the Guardian, and ITV’s Paul Brand. They were responsible for the most important Partygate revelations.
Harman says she would have stood aside as privileges chair if No 10 thought her tweets meant she could not be fair
Harriet Harman, the former Labour leader who chaired the privilges committee as it carried out the Boris Johnson inquiry, is speaking now.
She says an inquiry by the privileges committee is the only means available to the Commons to protect itself against a minister who is not being honest.
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, a Johnson supporter, asks Harman about the perception that the tweets she posted relating to Partygate undermined her inquiry.
Harman says she will address that.
She says she was appointed by the house as a whole, with the support of the government.
After the reports came out (in the Daily Telegraph) highlighting tweets which suggested that Harman was sympathetic to the view that Johnson had lied over Partygate, she says she took action.
After the tweets were brought to light, they were highlighted, because I am concerned about the perception of fairness of the committee and I agree that perception matters, I made it my business to find out whether or not it would mean that the government would not have confidence in me if I continued to chair the committee.
I actually said I am more than happy to step aside because perception matters and I don’t want to do this if the government doesn’t have confidence in me, because I need the whole House of have confidence in the work that the committee has mandated.
I was assured that I should continue the work that the house had mandated with the appointment that the house had put me into and so I did just that.
This is the first time Harman has said that. In the chamber it served as a solid put-down.
Theresa May says voters want to see MPs ‘coming to conclusion” on Johnson
May says the public want to see MPs “coming to a conclusion”.
That seems to be a dig at Rishi Sunak, and all those other Tory MPs are are avoiding taking a position on the committee’s report
If they see MPs trying to defend the careers of friends clearly guilty of wrongdoing, their respect for politicians is damaged.
MPs are leaders in their communities, she says. With that comes responsibility, she says.
She says they all know that in political debate there is “exaggeration, careful use of facts and sometimes misrepresentation”.
But when something is said that is wrong, MPs are under a duty not to repeat it, she says.
May also says it is important for parliament to punish MPs who break the rules. In a reference to Boris Johnson’s Vote Leave slogan, she says you could call that showing “the sovereignty of parliament”.
Back in the Commons, Theresa May, the former PM, is speaking.
She says the report is a rigorous one and she accepts it. She wants to make a wider point, she says.
It is not easy to judge colleagues. As PM, she had to take decisions based on the conduct of friends and colleagues.
Friendship, working together, should not get in the way of doing what is right.
She commends the privileges committee for their work, and for their dignity in the face of slurs.
She particularly thanks Harriet Harman for chairing the committee.
She says the committee’s work matters because it strikes at the heart of the bond of trust that needs to exist between politicians and the public.
Met chief Mark Rowley suggests action will be taken over Tory lockdown party organised by Shaun Bailey’s campaign team
Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan police commissioner, has given a strong hint that the Met will take action against Tories involved in the lockdown party organised by Shaun Bailey’s mayoral campaign team. In an interview with the News Agents podcast, asked about the video of the event leaked to the Mirror at the weekend, Rowley said:
We’re not routinely opening every minor historic allegation. So, if you phoned up about your neighbour from three years ago, we’re not going to reopen that.
But clearly cases that are particularly serious, particularly concerning, we will do.
As people know, that case has been previously looked at based on a photo. It’s very obvious a video tells a much richer, clearer story than a photo.
And so, the team are looking at that with a view to whether that provides a basis for further investigation …
I think we can all see the colourful nature of the video and how much it tells a story way beyond the original photo. I need to let a team work through that but I think we can all guess which way it will go.
The Met did not take action about this event when it originally investigated Partygate.
Penny Mordaunt is alone on the front bench, the Critic’s Robert Hutton points out.
Penny Mordaunt sits alone on the government front bench, having explained why she will be supporting the verdict on Boris Johnson. None of her ministerial colleagues have turned out to support her.
— Robert Hutton (@RobDotHutton) June 19, 2023
Brock says paragraph 210 of the report is scathing.
This is what it says.
We have concluded above that in deliberately misleading the House Mr Johnson committed a serious contempt. The contempt was all the more serious because it was committed by the Prime Minister, the most senior member of the government. There is no precedent for a Prime Minister having been found to have deliberately misled the House. He misled the House on an issue of the greatest importance to the House and to the public, and did so repeatedly. He declined our invitation to reconsider his assertions that what he said to the House was truthful. His defence to the allegation that he misled was an ex post facto justification and no more than an artifice. He misled the Committee in the presentation of his evidence
Deidre Brock, the SNP spokesperson on Commons matters, says Ian Blackford, the former SNP leader at Westminster, once got thrown out of the Commons for calling Boris Johnson a liar. But at the same time “the liar himself was protected by procedure”.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Con), father of the house, is speaking now.
He says Boris Johnson did many good things. He says he personally once got the words “I made a mistake, I apologise” into Hansard after something he did in the 1980s. He suggests Johnson should have done the same.
Debbonaire accuses Rishi Sunak of refusing to defend the privileges committee system.
Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons, intervenes, and disputes this. She says Sunak is on the record as defending the committee.
(That is sort of true. See 8.47am.)
Mordaunt also says Sunak has called out those MPs who have overstepped the mark by attacking the committee.
Back in the Commons Bob Seely, the Conservative MP, intervenes on Debbonaire. He says he will vote for the motion. He says his party “got rid of Boris Johnson a year ago because we lost faith in him because he was probably not telling the truth”.
But, Seely says, he is also an Iraq veteran. Addressing Labour, he says Tony Blair “lied and lied and lied and you lot covered up for him”.
In reply, Debbonaire says only last week Rishi Sunak was too weak to stand up to Johnson over his honours list.
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