Boris Johnson suggests Sue Gray was wrong person to lead Partygate inquiry amid new evidence he misled MPs – live
Sue Gray #SueGray
Johnson declines to criticise his supporters who are now saying Sue Gray’s report discredited
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.
Boris Johnson. Photograph: Sky News
Updated at 11.50 EST
Key events
Johnson needs to explain why he did not correct record ‘at earliest opportunity’, says privileges committee
Johnson declines to criticise his supporters who are now saying Sue Gray’s report discredited
Johnson says he would have queried Sue Gray’s independence during Partygate if he had known she would join Labour
People ‘standing 4-5 deep’ at No 10 leaving do attended by Johnson, says privileges committee report
Johnson ally suggests Tory MPs should try to block privileges committee inquiry
Johnson’s allies claim Gray report discredited, with Nadine Dorries saying it was written to bring him down
Labour says privileges committee evidence ‘absolutely damning’ about Johnson
Boris Johnson occasionally joined drinks gatherings in No 10 press office on Friday evenings during Covid, report says
What privileges committee says about how Johnson may have misled MPs about Partygate
Privileges committee rejects Johnson’s claim its findings based on Sue Gray’s report
Privileges committee says ‘reluctance’ of No 10 to hand over evidence when Johnson was PM held up inquiry
Boris Johnson claims he has been ‘vindicated’ by report, and criticises committee for relying on Gray’s evidence
Partygate: official said No 10 worried ‘about leaks of PM having piss up’ and added ‘I don’t think it’s unwarranted’
‘Struggling [to see] how this one is in rules’ – new evidence released to back claims Johnson misled MPs over Partygate
Boris Johnson to give evidence to privileges committee inquiry into claims he misled MPs in week starting 20 March
Civil servants’ union leader says it is ‘nonsense’ to think Sue Gray will pass government secrets to Labour
Gray appointment ‘undermines civil service’ and raises questions about Starmer’s judgment, says Johnson’s former PPS
Sue Gray hasn’t been hired to ‘spill the beans’ and won’t be involved in election campaigning, says Labour
Neil Coyle should be suspended from Commons for five days for bullying and harrassment, report says
Sue Gray appointment raises ‘tricky questions’ about trust between ministers and civil servants, says IfG thinktank
‘Utterly ludicrous’ to claim hiring Sue Gray means Partygate report was biased, says Labour
My colleague Aletha Adu has a roundup of the most revealing messages published today in the privileges committee report.
Updated at 12.19 EST
Johnson needs to explain why he did not correct record ‘at earliest opportunity’, says privileges committee
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.
Updated at 12.20 EST
Johnson declines to criticise his supporters who are now saying Sue Gray’s report discredited
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.
Boris Johnson. Photograph: Sky News
Updated at 11.50 EST
Q: Some of your supporters says this discredits her report.
Johnson declines to say that himself.
And that’s it. I will post full quotes from the interview shortly.
Updated at 11.41 EST
Johnson says he would have queried Sue Gray’s independence during Partygate if he had known she would join Labour
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.
Updated at 11.08 EST
Q: The committee says it should have been obvious to you rules were broken.
Johnson says as PM you do what civil servants advise you to do. You move from one event to another. As people know, he went to some events where he said thank you. He believed implicitly they were within the rules. And no one told him, before or after, that they were against the rules.
Q: But the report has a WhatsApp message from your communications director saying he was struggling to justify what happened?
Johnson says that was the birthday event in the cabinet room. No 10 was so sure it was within the rules that the official photographer was there.
If he had thought it was against the rules, he would have raised it with staff. There is nothing to suggest that. That is because he implicitly thought what happened was within the rules.
Updated at 11.09 EST
Johnson says the reason there is no evidence to show that he thought what was happening in No 10 was against the rules was because he did not think that.
He is certain there has been no contempt, he says.
Boris Johnson has recorded a clip for broadcasters about the privileges committee report. Sky and BBC News are showing it now. From what we have heard so far, it broadly just replicates what he said in a written statement earlier. (See 12.45pm.)
Updated at 11.09 EST
People ‘standing 4-5 deep’ at No 10 leaving do attended by Johnson, says privileges committee 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”.
Updated at 11.07 EST
Some of Boris Johnson’s supporters would like him back as prime minister. But Steve Baker, the Northern Ireland minister and a strong Johnson supporter during the Brexit process, told Times Radio that he should not come back. He said:
I don’t doubt that Boris feels that he left number 10 prematurely. But let’s not forget why it was. It was over the Pincher affair …
The idea that Boris Johnson could be back as prime minister when those were the circumstances which finally led to his departure, I’m afraid is fanciful.
Boris will have my admiration for a long time. He saved this country from a major constitutional crisis. He saved us from Jeremy Corbyn. And that means he saved the future of this nation. And I personally am very reluctant to be critical because we owe him this country’s prosperity and freedom.
But the idea of him coming back – I think he should bank the wins he’s got. Honestly, Boris, thank you, you saved the country. Don’t come back.
Today’s privileges committee report includes five photographs showing Boris Johnson at social gatherings in No 10 during Covid. Two of them are from 19 June 2020, when there was an impromptu birthday party for Boris Johnson in the cabinet room (for which he was fined). Two are from 13 November 2020, when there was a party to mark the departure of Lee Cain, the head of communications. And one is from 14 January 2021, when there was a leaving do for two private secretaries.
There are four photos from the 19 June event and five from the 13 November event in the Sue Gray report. The pictures in the privileges committee report are the same or similar, but the pixallation/blurring is less intense, which means the latest versions give a better sense of how little social distancing there was.
Here is one of the new ones from 19 June.
Boris Johnson (right) at a gathering celebrating his birthday – in which cake and alcohol was provided – in the cabinet room at 10 Downing Street. Photograph: Cabinet Office/PA
And here is one of the new ones from 13 November.
Boris Johnson (right) at a leaving gathering in the vestibule of the press office in Downing Street. Photograph: Cabinet Office/PA
The Gray report did not include any pictures from the 14 January event. Here is the one from today’s report. Although it shows Johnson addressing someone via video, there are four open bottles of sparkling wine on the table, suggesting some degree of partying.
Boris Johnson (left) at a leaving gathering for two officials, involving 15-20 people, in 10 Downing Street. Photograph: Cabinet Office/PA
Updated at 10.18 EST