By Tony O’Reilly-
Former prime minister Boris Johnson (pictured) has branded Sue Sue Gray the wrong person to conduct the Partygate report, after it emerged she has moved to the Labour Party.
A committee of Mps investigating Boris Johnson over the partygate scandal said the former British prime minister may have misled Parliament over the infamous scandal, according to a
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Evidence strongly suggests breaches of Covid rules would have been “obvious” to Mr Johnson, the privileges committee said in an update.
The former PM was among those fined by police for breaking lockdown rules at gatherings in government buildings.
He said there was no evidence he “knowingly” misled Parliament.
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Mr Johnson, who will appear before the committee later this month, said he had “believed implicitly” all events were within the rules.
On Friday previously unseen photos of Downing Street events and a number of WhatsApp messages from officials alongside its initial report.
It said evidence it had seen suggested Mr Johnson may have misled MPs in four comments to the Commons it is examining as part of its inquiry.
Mr Johnson was among 83 people fined by police for attending law-breaking events.
He said: ”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.”
He added that today’s report showed there was no evidence to suggest he knew the rules were being broken in No 10 when he told MPs they weren’t. He said:
”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 event he attended in the cabinet room – the surprise birthday “party”, for which he was fined – was against the rules.The Committee said 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.
When put to him that the report has a WhatsApp message from his communications director, he saying he was struggling to justify what happened, Johnson responded that it was the birthday event in the cabinet room. No 10 was so sure it was within the rules that the official photographer was there.
Johnson said 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.
In his statement, Mr Johnson added: “It is clear from this report that I have not committed any contempt of parliament.
“That is because there is no evidence in the report that I knowingly or recklessly misled parliament, or that I failed to update parliament in a timely manner.
“When I told the House that the rules and the guidance had been followed, that was my honest belief.”
If Mr Johnson is found to have misled Parliament, he could be suspended as MP or expelled, creating a by-election.
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