By Tony O’Riley-
Downing Street’s choice to head the inquiries into lockdown parties is unsafe and lead to a conflict of interest, the chairman of the Commons Standard Committee has said.
Civil servant Sue Gray has been selected by No 10 to lead the investigation, after The UK’s top civil servant, Simon Case, recused himself from the role, after it emerged that he also held a party in his own office last December.
Gray is a competent civil servant with plenty of experience, but there are questions being asked as to why Downing Street is selecting people to head an important investigation, where a conflict of interest could arise. Ms Gray previously served as head of the ethics team in the Cabinet Office, and the second permanent secretary at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Yet, there are concerns that her position might be weakened by a conflict of interest because she may know many of the ministers concerned very well.
Familiarity with powerful professionals who are the subject of investigation is often compromised by the potential consequences of an unfavourable finding, especially where the investigator and those being investigated have mutual friends or acquaintances. A thorough and unbiased investigation is always best conducted by independent bodies and individuals with no connection or affiliations with either of the parties. In an ideal world, the person leading an investigation of this nature will not be selected by Downing Street- who are themselves subject to the investigation, and an interested party.
Mr Bryant, who is chairman of the Commons standards committee, said he was not convinced about Ms Gray leading the investigation.
“She will know every single one of them [involved in the parties] I would have thought, so again I’m not sure that this is the right direction,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He told BBC Two’s Newsnight that “having somebody else from the civil service marking their own isn’t good enough” and that it should be someone with authority from outside the government and civil service.
Incredible Responsibility
Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner said Ms Gray had an “incredible responsibility to restore trust”.
Gray was brought in after the Guido Fawkes website exposed on Friday that two Christmas parties were held in Mr Case’s department, the Cabinet Office, in December 2020, when restrictions were in place.
The Times reported that one of the parties was held on December 17, the day before the alleged Christmas party at Downing Street at the centre of the saga.
The event was reportedly listed in digital calendars as “Christmas party!” and was organised by a private secretary in Mr Case’s team. The revelation surrounding Mr.Case’s own breach of the law makes it disappointing that he was even selected to head an investigation into a law even he had broken.
The 64-year-old has spent six years running the Cabinet Office’s propriety and ethics team and oversaw the so-called Plebgate inquiry in 2012 after former chief whip Andrew Mitchell was accused of calling a policeman a “pleb”.
Gray’s investigation into Theresa May’s deputy, Damian Green, in 2017 that led to his forced resignation after she found he had lied about pornography on his Commons computer.
Former Tory MP and Cabinet office minister Oliver Letwin is reported to have said of Ms Gray: “It took me precisely two years before I realised who it is that runs Britain.
“Our great United Kingdom is actually entirely run by a lady called Sue Gray, the head of ethics or something in the Cabinet Office. Unless she agrees, things just don’t happen.”
She is also part of the panel deciding who will be next chair of the media regulator Ofcom.
Ms Gray was once described by BBC Newsnight’s then policy editor as “the most powerful person you’ve never heard of”.
Speaking to that same programme on Friday, Tory MP Richard Holden described her as “formidable” and said she was “not a pushover”.
Ms Gray, who previously served as head of the ethics team in the Cabinet Office, is the second permanent secretary at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.