Boris Johnson suggests Sue Gray was wrong person to lead Partygate inquiry amid new evidence he misled MPs – as it happened

For all the extra shocking details [the committee] have published, their argument appears to be very straightforward: Johnson announced the rules, broke the rules and then denied that the rules had been broken.

It would have been obvious to the prime minister, they suggest, that his presence at these gatherings was against the guidance, and therefore he could not claim to have been ignorant of parties or to have needed assurances that they were above board. These are core parts of Johnson’s defence, according to the statement he put out within minutes of the interim report’s publication.

The almost 500-word justification and a subsequent television appearance from Johnson showed he was in full fightback mode. Johnson claimed the report had vindicated him because there was nothing saying he had misled parliament knowingly or recklessly. The committee may not yet have concluded definitively that Johnson misled the Commons, but in no way does it put him in the clear.

Rowena’s full analysis is here.

In an article for the Guardian Bob Kerslake, a former head of the civil service, says that the theory that Sue Gray set out to bring down Boris Johnson is “patently absurd”. He is referring to claims made by Tories such as Jacob Rees-Mogg (see 11.09am) and Nadine Dorries (see 4.31pm).

Kerslake says:

The notion that Gray was part of a “stitch-up” of Boris Johnson and his government through her role in leading the Partygate inquiry is patently absurd. Sue had left her ethics role to work in Michael Gove’s department when the inquiry began, and took on the lead role only when the cabinet secretary, Simon Case, recused himself from the role. At that time, there was no vacancy for Labour’s chief of staff role.

Gray’s report was hard hitting but scrupulously fair, and indeed the prime minister argued when it was published that he had been exonerated by it. Conspiracy theorists should not waste time looking any further. The prime suspect for the Johnson government’s demise is Boris Johnson.

You can read the full article here.

Most of the commentary about the privileges committee inquiry has focused on whether or not Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs when he told them the Covid rules were being followed in Downing Street. Giving misleading information to MPs is a contempt of parliament.

But the committee will also consider why Johnson, when it became clear that he had misled the Commons, did not correct the record more speedily. Today’s report shows that the committee wants to pursue this with him. It says:

The committee will want to hear from Mr Johnson why, instead of correcting the record at the earliest opportunity, he declined to answer questions that were within his direct knowledge, instead telling the house to await the report of the second permanent secretary ….

It appears that Mr Johnson did not correct the statements that he repeatedly made and did not use the well-established procedures of the house to correct something that is wrong at the earliest opportunity.

Not correcting the record promptly is potentially a serious matter because, as the committee pointed out in its report last year setting out the issues it would be considering, Erskine May (the parliamentary rulebook) says:

It is of paramount importance that ministers give accurate and truthful information to parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity.

Here are the key lines from Boris Johnson’s TV interview.

• Johnson suggested that, in light of the fact that she has now taken a job with Labour, Sue Gray was the wrong person to conduct the Partygate report. When it was put to him that he was now questioning the impartiality of a civil servant, he replied:

As I say, people will make up their own minds about this.

And I think that, if you told me at the time I commissioned Sue Gray to do the inquiry, if you’ve told me all the stuff that I now know, I think I might have cross-examined her more closely about her independence and I might have thought about whether she was … sorry, I might have invited her to reflect whether she was really the right person to do it.

• He declined to criticise his supporters who are now saying the Gray report is discredited. See 2.31pm for examples of what the Johnsonites are saying about the report. Asked about their comments, Johnson declined to say that he agreed with them, and instead tried to change the subject. When pressed on this, and asked if he would tell them they were wrong to say the report was discredited, he dodged the question again, before saying: “People will draw their own conclusions.”

What is so interesting about the report today is that after 10 months of efforts and sifting through all the innumerable WhatsApps and messages, they found absolutely no evidence to suggest otherwise [ie, to suggest that he knew the rules were being broken].

There’s absolutely nothing to show that any adviser of mine or civil servant warned me in advance that events might be against the rules, nothing to say that afterwards they thought it was against the rules, nothing to show that I myself believed or was worried that something was against the rules.

This is not correct. There is no evidence in the report that proves categorically that Johnson knew the rules were being broken when he assured MPs they weren’t. But there is quite a lot of new evidence to suggest that he knew. The committee says: “The evidence strongly suggests that breaches of guidance would have been obvious to Mr Johnson at the time he was at the gatherings.” See 12.21pm.

• He claimed that he was “very, very surprised” when he was told that an event he attended in the cabinet room – the suprise birthday “party”, for which he was fined – was against the rules.

Q: After the reports came out, did you ever think back and consider whether events had been within the rules?

Johnson says the initial story was about something he had not attended.

He asks why he would have gone to the dispatch box and said the events were within the rules if he had known he could have been contradicted.

He says he wants to add a “codicil”. He says it is a “peculiarity” that Sue Gray, who was presented to him as someone impartial, has now been appointed as Keir Starmer’s chief of staff.

Now people may want to look at that in a different light, he says.

Q: It is quite something to question a civil servant like that, isn’t it?

Johnson says people will make up their own minds.

He says, if he knew then what he knows now, he would have “cross-examined her more closely about her independence” before appointing her to do the Partygate report.

ITV News, which broke some of the key Partygate stories, launched a podcast about the story in January and its report quoted a source saying that, when Boris Johnson attended the leaving party for Lee Cain on 13 November 2020, he joked about it being “the most unsocially distanced party in the UK right now”.

The privileges committee report contains more evidence about this. It says:

On 27 November 2020, when the rules and guidance in force for the prevention of the spread of Covid included restrictions on indoor gatherings of two or more people, and maintaining social distancing of 2 metres or 1 metre with risk mitigations in the workplace wherever possible, Mr Johnson attended and gave a speech at a gathering in the vestibule of the No 10 press office to thank a member of staff who was leaving. We received evidence that there was no social distancing and people were standing 4–5 deep. We received evidence that Mr Johnson said that it was “probably the most unsocially distanced gathering in the UK right now”.