The committee says, if Boris Johnson were still an MP, it would recommend a suspension for 90 days. It says that last week it was set to recommend a suspension for more than 10 sitting days, enough to trigger the recall election process. But it says it increased the hypothetical punishment in the light of his statement on Friday night, attacking the committee and its draft findings, which itself was “a very serious contempt”.
Johnson is now an ex-MP, and so a suspension punishment can no longer apply. But the committee says Johnson should not be entitled the pass normally given to former MPs allowing them access to parliament.
In its summary the committee says:
The question which the house asked the committee is whether the house had been misled by Mr Johnson and, if so, whether that conduct amounted to contempt. It is for the house to decide whether it agrees with the committee. The house as a whole makes that decision. Motions arising from reports from this committee are debatable and amendable. The committee had provisionally concluded that Mr Johnson deliberately misled the house and should be sanctioned for it by being suspended for a period that would trigger the provisions of the Recall of MPs Act 2015. In light of Mr Johnson’s conduct in committing a further contempt on 9 June 2023, the committee now considers that if Mr Johnson were still a member he should be suspended from the service of the House for 90 days for repeated contempts and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process, by:
a) Deliberately misleading the house.
b) Deliberately misleading the committee.
c) Breaching confidence.
d) Impugning the committee and thereby undermining the democratic process of the house.
e) Being complicit in the campaign of abuse and attempted intimidation of the committee.
We recommend that he should not be entitled to a former member’s pass.
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Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, says that Boris Johnson is a liar, and that Rishi Sunak should call an early general election.
At Holyrood Humza Yousaf accused Boris Johnson of “betraying the people of the UK” during first minister’s questions.
During questions about delays to road improvements across the Highlands, Yousaf accused Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross of trying to “dodge” the scandal. Yousaf said Johnson was “not just lying to the House of Commons, but betraying the people of this country and of the UK”. He went on:
When they couldn’t visit a loved one, when they couldn’t attend funerals of loved ones, Boris Johnson was breaking the rules and having parties in Number 10.
Yousaf said that Ross “backed Boris Johnson to the very hilt” and later called on the Scottish Conservatives to apologise for backing Johnson and for all their MPs to vote for the report when it’s brought to the Commons.
Speaking to media after FMQs, Ross said the report was “significant” and “very thorough”. Ross was one of the first senior Tories to call for Johnson to quit in the wake of the revelations, but later revised his position after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
He said he would support the committee’s recommendations and called on fellow MPs to accept that the committee was doing the job asked of them. He said:
Not everyone will agree with the outcome of their deliberations but it was the parliament as a whole who asked for this.
Any MP found to have deliberately misled parliament is guilty of a grave incident and for a former prime minister that is even worse.
Ross also described Johnson’s behaviour in presiding over parties while people were dying and unable to visit sick relatives as “unforgivable”.
The privileges committee’s findings on Boris Johnson “is in danger of making the House of Commons look foolish”, the former business secretary Jacob Rees Mogg has said.
In an interview with GB News, the Johnson ultra-loyalist slammed the inquiry’s report, which he said contained “no real sanction”, while its recommendation that Johnson be suspended for 90 days was “merely trying to make a point”.
Rees-Mogg said the report had failed to address Johnson’s allegations that “most of the members of the committee” had already expressed deeply prejudiced remarks about the former prime minister’s guilt before they had seen the evidence and they should have recused themselves. He said:
Chris Bryant behaved absolutely properly and recused himself [from the committee’s investigation] because he had prejudged it. Harriet Harman did not and the problem with that is that the chairman of committees is extremely influential and important.
The first draft that goes to the committee to vote on is prepared by the chairman of the committee and that level of power or authority of influence is one that needs to be exercised by somebody who has not judged the case before the committee. And I think this is a fundamental flaw, which undermines all the work of the committee.
I think if you look back over the history of parliament, parliament sometimes makes great mistakes when it tries to stand on its dignity. I think that this report is in danger of making the House of Commons look foolish.
Rees-Mogg was referring to some tweets posted by Harman in April 2022, including one in which she commented, seemingly approvingly, on an Alastair Campbell tweet saying Johnson and other ministers lied repeatedly about Partygate.
Another question from a reader.
I note that in the minutes it was a 2-4 split on whether the committee would recommend Boris Johnson be expelled from the house. If that had gone the other way, would that be the harshest sanction placed on an MP in modern times?
It depends how you define modern. The last MP expelled from the Commons was Garry Allighan, a Labour MP who was expelled in 1947 because he had sold information about private Labour meetings to journalists, and then lied about it, and blamed others, when investigated by the privileges committee.
Boris Johnson’s supporters in the parliamentary Conservative party have been speaking out against the privileges committee’s report. They are a minority in parliament – a very small minority now, it appears – but they have not gone quiet. Here are some of their comments.
Nadine Dorries, the former culture secretary, says any MP who votes for the report is “fundamentally not a Conservative” and will be at risk of deselection.
This report has overreached and revealed it’s true pre determined intentions. It’s quite bizarre. Harman declared her position before it began. Jenkins, the most senior MP on committee attended an ACTUAL party. Any Conservative MP who would vote for this report is fundamentally not a Conservative and will be held to account by members and the public. Deselections may follow. It’s serious. MPs will now have to show this committee what real justice looks like and how it’s done.
And here are some more comments from Johnson allies.
From Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary:
I think [the committee] have come to conclusions that are not fully supported by the evidence. I think their fundamental judgment is wrong because I don’t think he deliberately misled parliament.
From Simon Clarke, the former levelling up secretary:
From Brendan Clarke-Smith:
From Paul Bristow:
From Mark Jenkinson
Here is a question from a reader.
Is the privileges committee unanimous in its findings? i.e. Did all the Tory MPs on the committee agree with the non-Tory? Is it a requirement that all MPs on a committee should agree with the final outcomes/opinions?
There are seven MPs on the committee and none of them have dissented from the report, and so in that sense it is unanimous. But, as the minutes reveal (on page 103 of the report), at a meeting on Tuesday, where the final version was agreed, the SNP MP Allan Dorans proposed an amendment to the final paragraph. Instead of it saying that if Johnson were still an MP they would be recommending a 90-day suspension, he wanted it to say that if Johnson were still an MP, they would be recommending his expulsion from the Commons. In a vote on the amendment, the Labour MP Yvonne Fovargue also backed the idea. But they were outvoted by the four Tories on the committee, Andy Carter, Alberto Costa, Sir Bernard Jenkin and Sir Charles Walker, who stuck with the 90-day proposals. Harriet Harman, the Labour chair, did not vote (which is normal practice for a committee chair, unless a vote is tied).
Downing Street has rejected call’s for Boris Johnson’s honours list to be rescinded in the light of the privileges committee’s report. Asked about this proposals, the PM’s spokesperson told journalists at the morning lobby briefing:
When it comes to honours, that’s a longstanding convention. The prime minister has abided by convention, that’s not going to change.
The spokesperson also said there were “no plans” either to force Johnson to repay the money spent by the government on his legal advice during the privileges inquiry (the Labour proposal – see 11am) or to remove his allowance as an ex-PM (the Lib Dem proposal – see 10.06am.)
On the allowance, the spokesperson said:
These arrangements are fairly longstanding – it’s not a personal salary or allowance, it’s the reimbursement of expenses for office and secretarial costs.
The Commons vote on the privileges committee report on Boris Johnson will take place on his birthday, Michael Savage from the Observer reports. He will be 59.
Downing Street won’t say whether Rishi Sunak will be in the Commons on Monday for the vote on the privileges committee report, John Stevens from the Mirror reports. He suspects Sunak might discover a diary appointment elsewhere.
Alongside its main report, the privileges committee has this morning published a short document with additional evidence and material, not previously published, that it relied upon when coming to its conclusions.
The new material includes this written submission from a No 10 official who explains how Covid guidance was regularly ignored in Downing Street in 2020. There was a culture of “not adhering to any rules”, they say.
Staff were even warned, before they went outside the front door, not to go outside in groups because outside No 10 they would be expected to observe social distancing.
The privileges committee report does not actually say that Boris Johnson “lied” to MPs. But it says he “deliberately misled” MPs (see 9.13am), which would match the definition of lying to most of us.
But Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, has used the term. She told the BBC:
Boris Johnson is not only a law breaker but he’s a liar …
He needs to apologise for what he’s put the public through – he won’t though because Boris Johnson never accepts responsibility for what he does.
Harry Cole, the political editor of the Sun, has also spoken to a “senior Tory” who thinks colleagues who vote for the privileges committee report risk being deselected.
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2023-06-15 13:18:00Z
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