Boris Johnson 'intended to mislead' Parliament and the committee – report's key conclusions

The Commons privileges committee concluded in a 106-page report that Boris Johnson had deliberately misled Parliament over his lockdown parties.

The seven MPs, chaired by Labour’s Harriet Harman, had taken more than a year to publish their report, after the House of Commons first referred the conduct of the then Prime Minister to them in April 2022.

Evidence was given to the committee in sworn written statements and live hearings, including the dramatic marathon session in March in which Mr Johnson defended himself under oath.

Suspension for 90 days

Boris Johnson would have been suspended for 90 days had he not resigned as an MP, the privileges committee said.

The unprecedented sanction could have sparked a recall petition, which would have seen him face a by-election in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat.

The MPs said the sanction was higher than it might have been because Mr Johnson has spent the past week deriding the committee as a “kangaroo court”.

Explaining why the sanction – much longer than that faced by SNP MP Margaret Ferrier – was so high, the report said: “The contempt was all the more serious because it was committed by the Prime Minister, the most senior member of the government.”

The four Tory MPs on the committee stopped the sanction from being changed to “expelled”, voting against the amendment put forward by the SNP’s Allan Dorans with the support of Labour’s Yvonne Fovargue.

Stripped of parliamentary pass

The committee decided that Mr Johnson should be stripped of his Commons pass in the light of his misleading of Parliament.

They recommended the extra sanction – which will be subject to a vote of all MPs – because his Friday night resignation meant he could not be suspended.

All former MPs are allowed Commons passes as former members, allowing them to socialise in Parliament’s various bars and restaurants even when they have quit politics. It is extremely rare for the pass to be taken away.

The committee’s report stated: “In view of the fact that Mr Johnson is no longer a Member, we recommend that he should not be granted a former Member’s pass.”

Five ways Johnson was found in contempt of Parliament

In its conclusion, the privileges committee listed five ways in which the former prime minister committed contempt of Parliament.

They said he had misled not only the House but also the committee itself during the hearing.

He had also breached the confidence of the committee by effectively revealing its verdict last week. Damningly, he was also found to have “impugned the Committee, the integrity of its members, and the impartiality of its staff and advisers”, and in addition to have been “complicit in the campaign of abuse and attempted intimidation” of the seven MPs judging him.

Six events where lockdown rules were broken

The committee’s report lists six events which it argues demonstrate that Mr Johnson was aware that rules had been broken in Downing Street during the pandemic.

Five of the events “had the core purpose of thanking staff who had been working hard, or raising morale following the departure of staff”.

The report cites a Downing Street garden party on May 20 2020, at which trestle tables were laid out and alcohol served to guests, and a farewell for Lee Cain, Mr Johnson’s outgoing communications chief on 13 November 2020, at which the Prime Minister was pictured holding a glass of wine aloft.

The events also include another farewell, on November 27 2020, for Mr Johnson’s former aide Cleo Watson, a Downing Street Christmas party on December 18 2020, and a leaving party for two private secretaries that led to fines from the Metropolitan Police.

The sixth event was Mr Johnson’s own birthday gathering, which led to fines for him and Rishi Sunak.

Johnson cannot have believed his own argument

The report concludes there was no way that Mr Johnson could really have believed that these were “essential for work purposes”.

They said it is “unlikely on the balance of probabilities that Mr Johnson, in the light of his cumulative direct personal experience of these events, could have genuinely believed that the rules or guidance were being complied with”.

The MPs said that a “workplace ‘thank you’, leaving drink, birthday celebration or motivational event is obviously neither essential nor reasonably necessary” and that Mr Johnson’s argument has “no reasonable basis in the rules of facts”.

It adds that there was “no obvious social distancing at any of the events for which the Committee has photographs” and that Covid mitigations Mr Johnson describes “are such marginal expedients as not touching pens or passing things to each other, except of course alcohol”.

He intended to mislead the House

The MPs on the privileges committee concluded that not only did Mr Johnson mislead the House, he intended to mislead the House.

They listed a number of ways he had been “disingenuous” with the inquiry and said it amounted to a “deliberate closing of his mind or at least reckless behaviour”.

They concluded: “Someone who is repeatedly reckless and continues to deny that which is patent is a person whose conduct is sufficient to demonstrate intent.

“Many aspects of Mr Johnson’s defence are not credible: taken together, they form sufficient basis for a conclusion that he intended to mislead.”

Sanction lengthened after ‘kangaroo court’ claims

The committee said it lengthened the proposed sanction – originally just 40 days, according to “informed sources” close to the committee – because Mr Johnson had attacked its members’ “integrity, honesty and honour” in “vitriolic terms”.

On Friday night, the former prime minister put out a 1,000-word statement saying the MPs had “forced him out anti-democratically”.

The MPs said: “This attack on a committee carrying out its remit from the democratically elected House itself amounts to an attack on our democratic institutions.

“We consider that these statements are completely unacceptable. In our view this conduct, together with the egregious breach of confidentiality, is a serious further contempt.”

Johnson didn’t tell the truth to the select committee

The MPs were also angry at Mr Johnson because he lied when he told them he did not believe it was a “kangaroo court”.

When he appeared before the committee, he claimed he was full of respect for its members and tried to distance himself from allies who had spoken of a “witch hunt”.

“We note that in his statement of 9 June, Mr Johnson himself used precisely those abusive terms to describe the Committee,” they said.

“This leaves us in no doubt that he was insincere in his attempts to distance himself from the campaign of abuse and intimidation of committee members. This in our view constitutes a further significant contempt.”

New report on MPs abusing the committee

The committee said it would be publishing a special report into the way some of Mr Johnson’s allies had impugned the integrity of the committee.

They said “there has been a sustained attempt, seemingly co-ordinated, to undermine the committee’s credibility and, more worryingly, that of those members serving on it”.

“The committee is concerned that if these behaviours go unchallenged, it will be impossible for the House to establish such a Committee to conduct sensitive and important inquiries in the future,” the report said.

“The House must have a committee to defend its rights and it must protect Members of the House doing that duty from formal or informal attack or undermining designed to deter and prevent them from doing that duty.”

Whistleblower

Downing Street officials were told not to leave the building in groups as part of a “pantomime” designed to show they were respecting lockdown rules, a civil servant has claimed.

In a newly-released piece of evidence to the inquiry into Boris Johnson’s conduct, a civil servant said Number 10 operated as an “island oasis of normality” during the Covid crisis.

The official said there was a “wider culture of not adhering to the rules” in Downing Street, and especially in the press office, where “Wine Time Fridays” continued throughout the crisis.

The civil servant also claimed they were told at the start of the pandemic that there was no point in wearing masks, and they said birthday parties continued despite lockdown restrictions, and that desk divider screens and one-way systems were not set up for a year.

The official said: “Operational notes were sent out from the security team to be mindful of the cameras outside the door, not to go out in groups and to social distance. It was all a pantomime.”