Partygate report: key findings of Commons privileges committee

The House of Commons privileges committee has found that Boris Johnson repeatedly misled MPs when he told them he knew nothing about lockdown-breaking social gatherings in and around Downing Street. These are the main points of what is a highly damning and hugely detailed report.

Key findings on wrongdoing

Johnson was found to have committed five serious offences:

1. Deliberately misleading the Commons

2. Deliberately misleading the privileges committee

3. Breaching confidence (by leaking part of the report in advance)

4. “Impugning” the committee, and thus parliamentary processes

5. Complicity in a “campaign of abuse and attempted intimidation of the committee”.

The punishment

If Johnson had not resigned as an MP, the committee would have recommended a 90-day suspension from parliament – hugely long, and well beyond the threshold needed for his constituents to have sought a byelection.

The committee recommended that he should not be given a pass allowing him access to parliament as an ex-MP, a traditional privilege.

How Johnson misled MPs

The report said he did this by:

Saying guidance was followed fully at No 10, and that this had been the case when he attended gatherings.

Failing to tell the Commons about his own knowledge of gatherings where rules or guidance was broken.

Saying he relied on assurances from officials and others that rules had not been broken. These “were not accurately represented by him to the house”, the report found, and were not properly authoritative.

Saying he could not answer questions before the issues had been investigation by Sue Gray, the senior civil servant who initially reported on the parties, when he already had personal knowledge he did not reveal.

Purporting to correct the record, but instead continued to mislead, and also misleading the committee with continued denials.

Being “deliberately disingenuous when he tried to reinterpret his statements to the house to avoid their plain meaning”, for example making “unsustainable interpretations” of Covid rules to justify gatherings.

Why Johnson’s offence was seen as especially serious

The report laid out what it said was the extent of Johnson’s culpability in misleading MPs, which it found was very serious. This was because of the former PM’s “repeated and continuing denials of the facts”, for example over the very obvious lack of social distancing at events.

It said Johnson was also to blame for “the frequency with which he closed his mind to those facts”, and the way he tried to “rewrite the meaning of the rules and guidance to fit his own evidence”, such as arguing that imperfect social distancing was better than cancelling an event.

The report also castigated Johnson’s “after-the-event rationalisations”, notably over the assurances he receive from others. It added: “His view about his own fixed penalty notice (that he was baffled as to why he received it) is instructive.”

Why the committee said this is important

The inquiry, they argued, “goes to the very heart of our democracy” given that people elect MPs to not just represent them but hold a government to account. It added: “Our democracy depends on MPs being able to trust that what ministers tell them in the House of Commons is the truth.”

The seven-strong committee said the key issue was failing to correct mistakes, as it was inevitable that ministers make mistakes “and inadvertently mislead”. They added: “When a minister makes an honest mistake and then corrects it, that is democracy working as it should.” What Johnson did, they stressed, was very different.

How they reached the conclusions

The report stresses how fair and open they have sought to be with all evidence given on oath, and all documents submitted to the inquiry passed on to Johnson, with no redaction. Johnson knew the identities of all witnesses.

All evidence was first hand, including emails, WhatsApp messages and photographs supplied by the government.

Johnson was also given warning of issues that arose from evidence submitted so he could provide his own written evidence in response, which he did. He was then shown the provisional conclusions of the report on 8 June.

The committee said: “There is no matter upon which the committee has reported that Mr Johnson has not had the opportunity to answer or comment upon.”