Boris Johnson came out fighting today when he denied deliberately misleading the Commons about Partygate.
The former prime minister is kicking off a four-hour standoff with the Committee on Privileges as he fights to clear his name, with the threat of a by-election hanging over his head.
Johnson has already issued a 52-page dossier insisting he was repeatedly assured by officials that lockdown rules were being followed at Downing Street.
He also criticized the “highly partisan tone and content” of the multi-party committee’s interim report.
Johnson acknowledged that the House of Commons was inadvertently “misled by my statements”, but insisted: “When the statements were made, they were made in good faith and on the basis of what I honestly knew and believed at the time.”
Labor Harriet Harman, the chair, said she will assess whether Johnson “recklessly” misled the House, as well as the more typical threshold of whether he did so “deliberately”. She insisted that members will ‘leave our party’s interests at the door’ and seek the ‘truth’.
It could recommend a suspension of the Commons, and if that were 10 days or more, there is the potential to trigger a by-election in Mr Johnson’s Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency. The House as a whole would have to pass a punishment, and Sunak said he would not order conservatives to support his predecessor.
MPs including supporters Jacob Rees-Mogg and Michael Fabricant, and critic Chris Bryant are in the audience for this afternoon’s hearing.
Boris Johnson will appear before the Committee on Privileges for his Partygate questioning today.
Labor Harriet Harman, the chair, said she will assess whether Johnson “recklessly” misled the House, as well as the more typical threshold of whether he did so “deliberately”.
The committee released a body of evidence this morning on which it will rely for the questioning of Boris Johnson this afternoon.
The testing package includes emails between staff about the meetings.
The former prime minister admitted in testimony before the committee that his statements to Parliament “did not turn out to be correct” but insisted that he amended the record “at the earliest opportunity”.
The Privileges Committee is chaired by Harriet Harman of Labor (pictured)
A stretch of evidence was released this morning before Johnson appeared before them at 2pm.
Adding to the drama, the House of Commons is debating and voting on Rishi Sunak’s new Brexit terms for Northern Ireland at the same time.
Johnson has signaled that he will join the DUP and Tory Eurosceptics who oppose the “Windsor Framework”, leaving the prime minister scrambling to minimize the scale of a damaging riot.
The 91-page package sets the stage for questions that will be asked of the former Prime Minister, including interviews with senior figures such as Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, former communications director Jack Doyle and Mr Johnson himself.
There are also snapshots of the government’s own Covid rules and guidance of key moments.
In preparing his evidence today, Mr Johnson said: “I think the evidence shows conclusively that I did not knowingly or recklessly mislead Parliament.”
The committee hasn’t produced one shred of evidence to show that I am.
Conservative MP Peter Bone said he did not think Johnson would be suspended.
“I don’t think for a moment that they are going to reach that decision because if you look objectively to say that Boris Johnson knowingly lied, there is no evidence of that,” he told Sky News.
‘Have you not received thousands and thousands of WhatsApp messages and you have been investigating for 10 months and found nothing?’
Yesterday, Johnson posted messages for the first time showing that his remarks to parliament directly reflected the advice he was receiving from officials.
Following media reports in November 2021 of a ‘party’ at the number 10 press office the previous Christmas, her then communications director Jack Doyle sent her a WhatsApp message saying: ‘I think you can say : “They have assured me that there was no party and the rules were not broken.”
Johnson then sought further assurance from his former head of communications, James Slack, who told him “the rules were followed.”
A few days later, as the media storm was building, Johnson asked Doyle to find a way to “spread the truth” about the event, suggesting that he was satisfied that the meeting had taken place within the rules.
In one section, Johnson acknowledged that he had gone beyond the line given to him by advisers, but stressed that it was based on his “honest and reasonable belief”.
“I wanted to repeat the line that my advisers had already given to the Daily Mirror, namely that: ‘Covid rules were followed at all times’.
‘However, he did believe that ‘all instructions were fully followed in issue 10’.
“This was based on my honest and reasonable belief at the time.”
Mr. Johnson began his presentation to the committee by repeating previous apologies “for what happened during my shift.”
“It is now clear that over a number of days there were meetings at number 10 that, however started, were past the point where they could be said to be reasonably necessary for business purposes,” he said.
The committee’s evidence package includes Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, who says he never gave Mr Johnson assurances that Covid rules were followed at No. 10. The Prime Minister’s Principal Private Secretary, Martin Reynolds, he also revealed that he advised Johnson not to say that instructions had been followed.
A poll of activists by the grassroots website ConservativeHome found widespread skepticism about the process, with 59 percent saying it is unfair.
“That should never have happened, and it fills me with sadness and regret that it did.”
Johnson highlighted a cache of evidence showing that officials repeatedly assured him that media reports of rule-breaking were wrong.
He noted that the committee’s 11-month investigation has been unable to find a single document that tells him the rules had been violated.
MPs are expected to question him closely over images of staff apparently close to each other and tables laden with alcohol.
