Boris Johnson will face new Commons inquiry over partygate
Boris Johnson will face a new House of Commons inquiry over the Downing Street partygate scandal, after the proposal was voted through parliament today.
A motion tabled by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer to refer Johnson to Westminster’s Committee of Privileges for potentially misleading parliament passed this afternoon, after a shambolic U-turn by the government saw Tory MPs told that they did not need to vote against it.
It comes as senior Tory MP Steve Baker today called for Johnson to resign, telling parliament “I think we have heard that the Prime Minister did know what the letter [of the law] was, the Prime Minister now should be long gone.”
The Committee of Privileges will be tasked with investigating whether Johnson misled parliament over partygate, after the Metropolitan Police last week found the Prime Minister had broken his own Covid rules.
The committee will be able to demand documents and photographs obtained by senior civil servant Sue Gray during her own inquiry of partygate.
Speaking in the House of Commons, Starmer said: “He stood at that despatch box and point blank denied rule breaking took place when it did.
“As he did so, he was hoping to gain extra protection from our assumption, and from the public’s assumption, that no Prime Minister would deliberately mislead the House. He has used our good faith to cover up his misdeeds.”
It has been widely speculated that the government U-turn happened because Johnson’s chief whip Chris Heaton-Harris could not convince enough Conservative MPs to block the motion.
Speaking to Sky News during his India trip, Johnson said: “What I felt was, people were saying ‘look, this looks as though we are trying to stop stuff coming out’.
“I didn’t want that, I didn’t want people to be able to say that. I don’t want this thing endlessly to go on. I have absolutely nothing, frankly, to hide here. If that is what the opposition want to talk about, that is fine.”
Johnson was fined £50 last week by the Metropolitan Police for attending his office birthday party in June 2020 during strict Covid rules, despite telling parliament in recent months that no rules were broken in Downing Street.
The Prime Minister contests that he did not deliberately mislead parliament, because he genuinely thought he hadn’t broken the rules by attending the Number 10 event.
Steve Baker, who was instrumental in bringing down ex-Prime Minister Theresa May, today said: “I am afraid I am now in a position where I have to acknowledge that if the Prime Minister occupied any other office of senior responsibility, if he was a secretary of state, if he was a minister of state, a parliamentary under secretary, a permanent secretary, a director general, if he was the chief executive of a private company or a board director he would be long gone.”
A Number 10 spokesperson said the government was initially going to block the vote as it wanted to make sure that it would only happen after the Met finished its investigation and Gray released her full report.
“We are content that in practice any parliamentary process would happen after both,” they said.