Johnson explains why he accepted claim No 10 press office Christmas drinks event, with food and presents, was not ‘party’
This is what Boris Johnson says about accepting the assurance that the Christmas drinks event organised by this press office on 18 December 2020, involving wine and presents, was not actually a party.
I asked Jack Doyle [his communications director] about the event, which he confirmed he had attended. He explained to me that the media team held a regular Friday evening team meeting, where they would discuss what had occurred during the week, and have a drink. As this was the last Friday of the year, there was also cheese and a Secret Santa. He reminded me that this had been a “nightmare” evening, as the country was about to go back into lockdown at a time when I was desperate to protect Christmas. He informed me that to call it a party was a great exaggeration. I asked him: “Was it within the rules?”. He told me: “It was within the rules.”
I had no basis to disbelieve Jack’s account of the event. The assurances provided by Jack Doyle must also be understood within the context within which we were working. The staff at No 10 regularly were working around the clock. On 18 December 2020 the media department were working late into the night on the difficult messages we would be giving to the public: in particular, that we were going to have to go back into lockdown and, in many cases, families would be unable to spend Christmas together. They were also preparing for both a deal and no deal Brexit. It is in this context that I understood that members of the press office, who were gathered for work purposes in No. 10 leading the government’s response to Covid-19, had wine and cheese and exchanged gifts at their desk. This did not sound to me like a breach of the rules or the guidance, let alone a party. Based on the information with which I was provided, this sounded like it was firmly within the work exception, and consistent with the guidance. Drinking wine or exchanging gifts at work and whilst working did not, in my view, turn an otherwise lawful workplace gathering into an unlawful one.
The privileges committee, in its report earlier this month, said it should have been “obvious” to Johnson that rules had been broken. This passage is useful because it contains plenty of detail to suggest that a PM other than Johnson might have come to a different conclusion, and perhaps interrogated his communications director more aggressively.
At the hearing tomorrow Johnson may be asked why he accepted Jack Doyle’s claim the event was within rules so readily.
Key events
Johnson says it remains ‘mystery’ to him why he was fined for birthday event in cabinet room, but others there weren’t
In his submission to the privileges committee Boris Johnson says it remains “a mystery” to him why he was fined by the Met police for attending the birthday party/gathering in the cabinet room on 19 June but other people who were there were not. He says:
Some attendees did not receive fixed penalty notices, so the police must have decided that they nevertheless had reasonable excuses for being there. What those excuses were, and why the police decided that I did not have one remains a mystery to me.
Alexander Horne, a former parliamentary laywer, has written an article for the Spectator assessing Boris Johnson’s submission to the privileges committee, and his prospects when he gives evidence tomorrow. He says some of Johnson’s arguments about the process being unfair are “hyperbolic”.
What do we learn from the 52-page dossier? Well, Johnson accepts that he misled parliament. His main contention seems to be that this was not deliberate and that he ‘could not have predicted the subsequent revelations that came to light following the investigations by Sue Gray and the Metropolitan Police’.
Johnson and his advisers have also made some punchy arguments about the committee’s processes, focusing on a number of procedural issues. Johnson argues that the committee’s proceedings go beyond their remit and that it is potentially biased, complaining about the ‘partisan tone and content’ of the interim report.
None of this seems hugely convincing and, based on my two decades working as a senior parliamentary lawyer, I would suggest that some of Johnson’s defences are simply hyperbolic.
Looking ahead to the hearing tomorrow, Horne says Johnson’s failure to correct the record quickly is a particular vulnerability.
The challenge that Johnson will face tomorrow is that, as well as the four separate occasions that the committee has suggested that he may have misled the house (whether inadvertently, ‘recklessly or deliberately’), it has also highlighted the fact that the former prime minister ‘did not use the well-established procedures of the house to correct something that is wrong at the earliest opportunity’. This is contrary to the 1997 Resolution of the House on ministerial accountability to parliament. If Johnson is unable to rebut this interim conclusion, then such a finding could well amount to a contempt of parliament in its own right. His initial attempt, in the submission, where he argues he could not say anything while investigations by the police and Sue Gray were ongoing, appears fairly weak.
But Horne says he would be surprised if the committee were to recommend a suspension of 10 days or more (the threshold for triggering a recall petition).
Even if the committee finds that Johnson has committed a contempt, the type of sanctions that it can recommend include anything from requiring him to apologise to the house, to proposing a suspension of ten days or more which could, in theory, lead to a recall petition and a possible by-election in his constituency of Uxbridge and South Ruislip. Given that its recommendation must be approved by the House of Commons, I would be surprised if the committee opted for the nuclear option unless it had very cogent evidence that Johnson had deliberately misled the House on these matters.
Braverman accused of ‘dangerous’ complacency in tackling police failings
Suella Braverman, the home secretary, has been accused of being “dangerously complacent” in tackling the major failings within the police service highlighted in the damning Casey review and urged to immediately suspend all officers being investigated for domestic violence and sexual assault claims. My colleague Jamie Grierson has the story here.
Dominic Cummings, who was Boris Johnson’s chief adviser until he was forced out in November 2020 and who later ran a single-handed social media campaign to remove Johnson from office, says he will publish commentary on Johnson’s oral evidence to the privileges committee tomorrow.
In a post on his Substack account today, Cummings says he thinks that, even if Johnson emerges from the inquiry unscathed, the chances of his returning to No 10 are lower than people think. He says:
Unless Sunak gets fed up and walks away, he can use the vast trove of material in PET [propriety and ethics team] (the part of the Cabinet Office that deals with scandals) to smash the Trolley [Johnson] up. Much remains unpublished. And remember that useless Lord Geidt didn’t even bother investigating all sorts (he didn’t interview key people who actually knew what was going on). So if Sunak’s team is crashing, there’ll be people in No10 who’ll think ‘we may be doomed but we’ll finish the trolley off’. And spads who’d relish it will be helped by officials who don’t want the trolley smashing around again as they prepare for Starmer.
The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice campaign says Boris Johnson should resign as an MP. In a Twitter thread starting here, it claims that he lied when he said that he had done everything to protect people during the pandemic, and it says this was “far worse” than what he said about Partygate.
It’s obvious that Boris Johnson deliberately misled Parliament and should resign as an MP.
Far worse though is the lies he deliberately told to bereaved families, after failing to protect our loved ones.
His claim that he did so in “good faith” is sickening. https://t.co/Sl8o1gO9gC
— Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK (@CovidJusticeUK) March 21, 2023
‘Is there way we could get truth about this party out?’ – Johnson says WhatsApp message shows he opposed Partygate cover-up
One of the new messages revealed in the Boris Johnson document today is a WhatsApp message that he sent to Jack Doyle, his communications director, in which he said: “Is there a way we could get the truth about this party out there?” Johnson says that when he used the word “party”, he was doing so because that was what the media were calling it, not because that was what it was. He says
Further support can be found in the contemporaneous WhatsApp messages involving me, which are in the committee’s possession. On 10 December 2021, I sent a message to Jack Doyle, stating: “Is there a way we could get the truth about this party out there”. I trusted the assurances that Jack Doyle and others had given me, so I wanted the “truth” as they had explained it and as I honestly believed it, to be published. I used “party” as shorthand because that it how it was being referred to in the media.
A fair-minded reader might say this argument has some force. A more cynical reader might say, if your “bombshell” evidence to show that you weren’t aware of parties is an email containing the word “party”, then you might be in some difficulty.
Hardline Tory MPs reject Sunak’s Northern Ireland Brexit plan
Turning away from Boris Johnson for a moment, the European Research Group (ERG) of hardline Brexiter Conservative MPs has rejected Rishi Sunak’s revised plan for trading arrangements in Northern Ireland, saying it would keep EU law as “supreme”. My colleague Peter Walker has the story here.
In his submission Boris Johnson reveals that, in what he told MPs about Partygate, he relied to a considerable extent on what he was told by Jack Doyle, his director of communications. But in paragraph 86, perhaps inadvertently, Johnson includes a line that could be taken as implying that there were others working in No 10 who were perhaps more reliable.
Writing about his reaction after ITV News broadcast a clip of Allegra Stratton, his press secretary, joking about a No 10 party at a private briefing rehearsal, he says:
I had not previously seen this video. It caused me immediate concern. On the evening of 7 December 2021, I received a WhatsApp message from Jack Doyle stating: “I think you can say ‘I’ve been assured there was no party and no rules were broken’”. Later that evening, I rang James Slack, who I regard as a man of great integrity, and who was in the building on the evening of 18 December 2020 (and had been with me in the Covid O Zoom meeting before I went up to my flat). I asked him to describe what happened at the event. His account was consistent with that of Jack Doyle. He confirmed to me that the rules were followed.
Here is Lewis Goodall from the News Agents podcast on what Boris Johnson said about the “most unsocially distanced” party/gathering. (See 1.07pm.)
Johnson repeatedly shifts the blame to others who were at the events. What this doesn’t account for (and note he doesn’t definitively deny that he said it was ‘the most unsocially distanced gathering in the UK right now’) is why as PM he didn’t break the events up. pic.twitter.com/ZLogUKAbs3
— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) March 21, 2023
Johnson does not deny joking about No 10 event being ‘most unsocially distanced gathering in UK right now’
One of the most damaging pieces of evidence in the report published by the privileges committee earlier this month was the claim that when Boris Johnson attended the leaving party for Lee Cain on 13 November 2020, he joked about it being “the most unsocially distanced gathering in the UK right now”.
This was in written evidence from a No 10 official. In January ITV quoted a No 10 source telling almost exactly the same story, although in the ITV version the source says Johnson said this must be “the most unsocially distanced party” in the UK.
In his statement today Johnson does not deny saying the “gathering” version of that quote (he claims he cannot remember saying it), and he says the same witness quoted by the committee also said in their statement that Johnson was drinking water and “the most sensible person there”.
[No. 10 official] has given evidence to the committee that, at this event, I said “this is probably the most unsocially distanced gathering in the UK right now”. This comment has been publicised widely, in light of its selective inclusion by the committee in the fourth report at §26. What the committee failed to record in the fourth report was the next line of [No. 10 official]’s statement: “he had a glass of water in his hand, made a short speech and then went up to his flat. He was the most sensible person there to be honest”.
That does not seem a compelling argument; saying that Johnson was partying less than anyone else is not the same as saying there was no party.
In the next paragraph, Johnson also says he did not think the guidance mandated “full social distancing” at all times anyway. He says:
I do not remember saying the words quoted by [No. 10 official] – and it seems unlikely given that it was, as [No. 10 official] says, a small and impromptu event. But I might well have made observations in speeches about social distancing, and whether it was being perfectly observed. That does not mean that I thought the guidance was contravened. As I have already explained, I did not believe that the guidance required full social distancing at all times provided you did what you could overall, and put additional mitigations in place where social distancing was not possible.
Johnson explains why he accepted claim No 10 press office Christmas drinks event, with food and presents, was not ‘party’
This is what Boris Johnson says about accepting the assurance that the Christmas drinks event organised by this press office on 18 December 2020, involving wine and presents, was not actually a party.
I asked Jack Doyle [his communications director] about the event, which he confirmed he had attended. He explained to me that the media team held a regular Friday evening team meeting, where they would discuss what had occurred during the week, and have a drink. As this was the last Friday of the year, there was also cheese and a Secret Santa. He reminded me that this had been a “nightmare” evening, as the country was about to go back into lockdown at a time when I was desperate to protect Christmas. He informed me that to call it a party was a great exaggeration. I asked him: “Was it within the rules?”. He told me: “It was within the rules.”
I had no basis to disbelieve Jack’s account of the event. The assurances provided by Jack Doyle must also be understood within the context within which we were working. The staff at No 10 regularly were working around the clock. On 18 December 2020 the media department were working late into the night on the difficult messages we would be giving to the public: in particular, that we were going to have to go back into lockdown and, in many cases, families would be unable to spend Christmas together. They were also preparing for both a deal and no deal Brexit. It is in this context that I understood that members of the press office, who were gathered for work purposes in No. 10 leading the government’s response to Covid-19, had wine and cheese and exchanged gifts at their desk. This did not sound to me like a breach of the rules or the guidance, let alone a party. Based on the information with which I was provided, this sounded like it was firmly within the work exception, and consistent with the guidance. Drinking wine or exchanging gifts at work and whilst working did not, in my view, turn an otherwise lawful workplace gathering into an unlawful one.
The privileges committee, in its report earlier this month, said it should have been “obvious” to Johnson that rules had been broken. This passage is useful because it contains plenty of detail to suggest that a PM other than Johnson might have come to a different conclusion, and perhaps interrogated his communications director more aggressively.
At the hearing tomorrow Johnson may be asked why he accepted Jack Doyle’s claim the event was within rules so readily.
Boris Johnson’s team believe it may have been misleading for the privileges committee to say that his dossier contains “no new documentary evidence”. (See 12.10pm.) Although it does not contain material not previously seen by the committee, it does contain evidence that has not been published until today, they point out.
Johnson claims earlier privileges committee report criticising him was ‘highly partisan’ and ‘selective’
In his submission Boris Johnson says the report published by the committee earlier this month, which said it should have been obvious to him that rules had been broken, was “highly partisan”. He says:
It is important to record my disappointment at the highly partisan tone and content of the fourth report. The fourth report appears to record findings of fact (see eg “The evidence strongly suggests that breaches of guidance would have been obvious to Mr Johnson at the time he was at the gatherings”), despite the fact that the committee has not yet heard any evidence from me.
The fourth report is also extremely selective in the evidence cited. The fourth report fails to refer to the fact that, despite a “rigorous and thorough” investigation, the committee did not identify a single document which suggested that I was informed or warned by anyone that any event at No. 10 was contrary to the rules or guidance; it fails to refer to the fact that a significant number of witnesses gave evidence that I had in fact received assurances that the rules were complied with at No 10; and it fails to refer to the fact that the view of many other officials working at No 10 was that the rules and guidance were being complied with.
The committee is chaired by Labour’s Harriet Harman, but she is one of only two Labour MPs on it. There is also an SNP member. But the other four members are Conservatives, meaning they are in the majority.
Yesterday, in some of the reports about what Boris Johnson would say in his submission, it was claimed that he would argue that the inquiry was biased because of tweets posted in the past by its chair, the Labour MP Harriet Harman. But the submission published today does not seem to contain this material. Either the briefing was wrong, or else a last minute decision may have been taken not to “attack the referee”.
Commons privileges committee says Johnson’s submission contains ‘no new documentary evidence’
The Commons privileges committee has put out a statement about the publication of Boris Johnson’s evidence. Here are the main points.
The committee initially received the written evidence from Mr Johnson on Monday afternoon at 2.32pm in unredacted form. The evidence submitted had a number of errors and typos, and, a final corrected version was not submitted to the privileges committee until 8.02am this morning. Redactions have been made in the published version to protect the identity of some witnesses, in consultation with Mr Johnson, particularly junior-ranking civil servants.
Editors who worked with Johnson as a journalist will tell you that his copy never arrived on time.
Ahead of the oral evidence session on Wednesday, the committee will be publishing, again by agreement with Mr Johnson, a “core bundle” of documents to which the committee and Mr Johnson may refer in the course of the questioning. These documents will be published on the committee website at 9.00 am on Wednesday.
This may include statements from the No 10 officials who gave evidence to the committee, as well as emails or WhatsApp messages. The committee quoted some of this in its report earlier this month, but did not publish the statements in full.
Throughout this inquiry the committee has received and followed the advice of its legal adviser, former senior president of tribunals and Lord Justice of Appeal Rt Hon Sir Ernest Ryder, as well as the impartial clerks of the house. The committee remains confident in the fairness of its processes and in its compliance at all times with the rules and practice of the House of Commons.
Johnson claims ‘vast majority’ of No 10 staff interviewed have not said they thought Covid rules broken
In its report earlier this month, summarising the case against Boris Johnson on the basis partly of No 10 internal messages that had not at that point been made public, the privileges committee said it should have been obvious to Boris Johnson that Covid rules were broken at No 10 events.
In response, Johnson says:
The committee appears to be mounting a case that, despite the absence of any evidence of warnings or advice, it should have been “obvious” to me that the rules and guidance were not being followed, because of the gatherings that I attended. It is important to be frank: this amounts to an allegation that I deliberately lied to parliament.
But it is also an allegation that extends to many others. If it was “obvious” to me that the rules and guidance were not being followed, it would have been equally obvious to dozens of others who also attended the gatherings I did. The vast majority of individuals who have given evidence to the committee and the Cabinet Office investigation have not indicated that they considered that their attendance at the events contravened the rules or the guidance.
The wording of this might be significant. “Have not indicated” they thought events broke the rules is not necessarily the same as “did not think” events broke the rules.
