Partygate: Boris Johnson advisers were ‘struggling to contend that some gatherings were within rules’, new evidence shows – live

Key events

Privileges committee says 'reluctance' of No 10 to hand over evidence when Johnson was PM held up inquiry

In its report the privileges committee says the “reluctance” of the government to provide it with unredacted evidence when Boris Johnson was still prime minister held up its inquiry. It says:

Our inquiry was initially held up by a reluctance on the part of the government to provide unredacted evidence …

The committee wrote to the government on 14 July, in the same terms as it wrote to Mr Johnson on that date, to request relevant materials in its possession. The government responded to our request by providing, on 24 August, documents which were so heavily redacted as to render them devoid of any evidential value. Some material had been redacted even though it was already in the public domain. Following further engagement between the committee and ministers and senior officials, which took some months, unredacted disclosure of all relevant material was finally provided on 18 November.

Boris Johnson claims he has been 'vindicated' by report, and criticises committee for relying on Gray's evidence

Boris Johnson claims today’s report from the privileges committee has “vindicated” him.

In a statement just released, he said:

It is clear from this report that I have not committed any contempt of parliament. It is also clear that what I have been saying about this matter from the beginning has been vindicated.

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.

Nor is there any evidence in the report that I was aware that any events taking place in No 10 or the Cabinet Office were in breach of the rules or the guidance.

Like any prime minister I relied upon advice from officials. There is no evidence that I was at any stage advised by anyone, whether a civil servant or a political adviser, that an event would be against the rules or the guidance before it went ahead. There is no evidence that I was later advised that any such event was contrary to requirements.

So, when I told the house that the rules and the guidance had been followed, that was my honest belief.

He said that, if he had known about “a matter of such importance” (ie, Partygate), he would have raised it with his team, and they would have raised it with him. He went on:

No such concerns were raised on either side and all my statements to the House of Commons were based on that understanding and advice.

And he criticised the privileges committeee for relying on evidence provided by Sue Gray in her Partygate report. He said:

So it is surreal to discover that the Committee proposes to rely on evidence culled and orchestrated by Sue Gray, who has just been appointed chief of staff to the leader of the Labour party.

Partygate: official said No 10 worried 'about leaks of PM having piss up' and added 'I don't think it's unwarranted'

The privileges committee report is thick with footnotes providing evidence supporting what is said in the main text.

Here are three footnotes supporting the extract posted at 12.21pm.

Written evidence submission received 1 March 2023 [evidence not yet published but being disclosed to Mr Johnson]

WhatsApp message: [No. 10 official, 28/04/2021, 16:47:12] “[No 10 official]’s worried about leaks of PM having a piss up and to be fair I don’t think it’s unwarranted”

Written evidence submission received 1 March 2023 [evidence not yet published but being disclosed to Mr Johnson]

WhatsApp messages: [Director of Communications, 25/01/2022, 06:54:30] “Have we had any legal advice on the birthday one?” […]

[Director of Communications, 25/01/2022, 06:55:06] “Haven’t heard any explanation of how it’s in the rules”

Written evidence submission received 1 March 2023 [evidence not yet published but being disclosed to Mr Johnson]

WhatsApp messages: [No 10 official, 25/01/2022, 08:04:46] “I’m trying to do some Q&A, it’s not going well”

[Director of Communications, 25/01/2022, 08:05:12] “I’m struggling to come up with a way this one is in the rules in my head”

[Director of Communications, 25/01/2022, 08:05:20] “PM was eating his lunch of course”

[No. 10 official, 25/01/2022, 08:06:47] “I meant for the police bit but yeah as ridiculous as the cake thing is it is difficult”

[No. 10 official, 25/01/2022, 08:06:56] “‘Reasonably necessary for work purposes’”

[Director of Communications, 25/01/2022, 08:07:40] “Not sure that one works does it. Also blows another great gaping hole in the PM’s account doesn’t it?”

'Struggling [to see] how this one is in rules' - new evidence released to back claims Johnson misled MPs over Partygate

The privileges committee report out today includes evidence that has not been made public before, suggesting Boris Johnson was not being honest with MPs when he told them the Covid rules were followed at all times in No 10.

It includes this paragraph.

The evidence strongly suggests that breaches of guidance would have been obvious to Mr Johnson at the time he was at the gatherings.

There is evidence that those who were advising Mr Johnson about what to say to the press and in the house were themselves struggling to contend that some gatherings were within the rules.

• The director of communications stated in a WhatsApp of 25 January 2022 to a No 10 official in relation to the gathering of 19 June 2020 that “Haven’t heard any explanation of how it’s in the rules”.

• In a separate WhatsApp exchange with a No 10 official of 25 January 2022 in relation to the gathering of 19 June 2020, the director of communications stated: “I’m struggling to come up with a way this one is in the rules in my head”, and in response to a suggestion that they describe the event as “reasonably necessary for work purposes”, “not sure that one works does it. Also blows another great gaping hole in the PM’s account doesn’t it?”

Boris Johnson to give evidence to privileges committee inquiry into claims he misled MPs in week starting 20 March

Boris Johnson will give evidence in the week beginning 20 March to the Commons privileges committee investigating allegations he misled MPs about Partygate, the committee has announced. The committee said:

The committee of privileges today is taking further steps in its inquiry into the conduct of Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP. Mr Johnson has accepted the committee’s invitation to give oral evidence in public in the week beginning 20 March.

The exact date and time of the evidence session will be announced shortly. The session arises out of the referral from the House of Commons of the matter to the committee. The session, which will be held in public, will see the committee’s members, comprised of four Conservative, two Labour and one SNP member, question Mr Johnson on a range of matters arising from evidence submitted to the inquiry, as set out in a report published today.

The committee has also published a report summarising the issues it will raise with Johnson.

Civil servants' union leader says it is 'nonsense' to think Sue Gray will pass government secrets to Labour

Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA union, which represent senior civil servants, has criticised Conservative MPs claiming that Sue Gray’s decision to take a job with Keir Starmer means her Partygate report is discredited. In an interview with Sky News, he said:

[Gray] produced a report which was welcomed at the time, including by the prime minister …

What we are talking about here is someone who has given her life to public service.

She had a fearsome reputation for her integrity. She has done some of the most difficult jobs in government. I think it is really disappointing to see ministers now trying to trash that simply because she has decided to take a very different job later on in her career.

Penman also said it was “nonsense” to think she would divulge government secrets to Labour.

The idea that Sue Gray would somehow be taking this job to divulge the secrets of the Conservative party or of government is obviously just nonsense, and most ministers understand and know that.

He said that, even though Gray no longer works for the civil service, she remains bound by the restriction on revealing confidential information that applied when she was a civil servant.

Dave Penman. Photograph: Andy Buchanan/AFP/Getty Images

Yesterday John Swinney announces that he will stand down as Scotland’s deputy first minister when a new SNP leader is elected to replace Nicola Sturgeon as first minister. In an interview on BBC’s Good Morning Scotland, he said he had not yet decided whom to back in the leadership contest. Asked to give his preference, he replied:

I’ve not come to any conclusions, I’m listening to the debate, I’m observing the contest and if I feel the need to say something then I will do.

The three candidates are Humza Yousaf, Kate Forbes and Ash Regan.

Private landlords have been accused of “making up stories” about the state of the rental sector in an attempt to persuade the government to scrap UK tax measures forecast to cost them close to £1bn a year, my colleague Robert Booth reports.

Gray appointment 'undermines civil service' and raises questions about Starmer's judgment, says Johnson's former PPS

Two of Boris Johnson’s leading supporters in parliament are Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nadine Dorries and they have been forcefully arguing that Sue Gray’s appointment as chief of staff to Keir Starmer means her Partygate report is now discredited. This is what Rees-Mogg said on his GB News show last night.

It is hard not to feel that she has been rewarded and offered a plum job for effectively destroying a prime minister and creating a coup. This blows apart the idea of civil service impartiality. This appointment stinks.

Her report brought down the first minister of the crown, who had a majority of 80 from the electorate. This appointment invalidates her Partygate report and shows that there was a socialist cabal of Boris haters, who were delighted to remove him.

And this is what Dorries posted on Twitter yesterday.

But it was left to a more humble Commons Johnsonite to make this argument on the Today programme. Alexander Stafford, the Tory MP and former parliamentary private secretary to Johnson, was interviewed on the programme just before Labour’s Lucy Powell. But he went down in flames, and the interview was terminated early, because he repeatedly refused to answer questions from Nick Robinson, who wanted to know if Stafford accepted that the No 10 lockdown parties did actually happen and if, since he was arguing Gray’s report was flawed, he wanted a fresh investigation into Partygate.

Before Stafford was cut off, he said the Gray appointment was “dodgy” because it did not pass the “sniff test”. He said:

Of course it’s dodgy. How can somebody who only a matter of months ago condemned one prime minister, then go and work for the leader of the opposition in such a close capacity? This really doesn’t pass the sniff test, it really undermines the work that she’s done, undermines the civil service and really puts in question Sir Keir’s complete judgment.

This is from Jake Richards, the Labour candidate in Stafford’s Rother Valley constituency.

Sue Gray hasn't been hired to 'spill the beans' and won't be involved in election campaigning, says Labour

Lucy Powell, the shadow culture secretary, has used her morning interview round to rubbish claims that Keir Starmer’s decision to hire Sue Gray means the findings of her Partygate report are now discredited. (See 9.20am.) But she had more to say on the story too. Here are the main points.

• Powell refused to commit Labour to disclosing when it first approached Gray about working for Keir Starmer. In her interview on Today, Powell said she did not know when those talks started. Asked if the party would disclose that information, she said she could not say.

• But she said that Gray was not talking to Labour about taking up a job in Starmer’s office at the time of the Partygate investigation. She said:

What I do know ... is that the idea that Sue Gray had conversations with anybody during that time that she was investigating these very serious allegations – she wasn’t even talking to the prime minister and to others in government at the time because she was so determined to maintain her impartiality and independence ... It was a year ago now.

• Powell said that Gray was not being hired to “spill the beans” on Tory ministers. Asked on Times Radio if Gray’s knowledge of ministers made her attractive to Labour, Powell replied:

Absolutely not. And, of course, there’s no suggestion whatsoever that Sue would reveal any of that information. It’s not what she’s coming in to do.

She also told Today:

Sue Gray has worked for successive governments, Labour governments Conservative governments, she’s worked for prime ministers, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, Theresa May, many of whom hated each other, and she’s never ever spilled the beans on any of those.

• Powell said Gray would not be involved in Labour’s election campaigning. She said:

The role that Sue will be doing is entirely separate from our election operation which is really formidable now ... that’s a separate task to the task that Sue is hopefully going to come and join the Labour party to help us with, which is getting ready so that we can actually change the way government works.

• Powell said that Gray and Starmer would abide by the recommendations of the advisory committee on business appointments, which advises on how long ministers and senior officials should wait before taking up an appointment outside government. As a minimum Acoba is likely to recommend a three-month wait, but it could say the appointment should be delayed for up to two years. Powell said the party would “absolutely” abide by Acoba’s advice.

• Powell said Gray was being hired to get Labour ready for government. She said:

As we look forward to the next general election, he wants to make sure that he and the rest of us in the shadow cabinet, and the whole team, are ready for if and when we win the next election.

Sue Gray is a hugely respected civil servant with a lot of experience. Keir has made no secret of the fact that he had been looking for someone with that recent government experience that can help the Labour party, and help him personally, get ready for that big transition to government.

Lucy Powell. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Neil Coyle should be suspended from Commons for five days for bullying and harrassment, report says

The MP Neil Coyle should be suspended from the House of Commons for five days after breaching parliament’s bullying and harassment policy, the independent expert panel says.

The IEP, which was set up to consider bullying and harassment claims against MPs, has published a report recommending the suspension after the “foul-mouthed and drunken abuse” of another MP’s assistant.

In another case, Coyle, who was elected as a Labour MP but who has been sitting as an independent since being suspended by the party, was “accused of bullying and harassment of a parliamentary journalist”. Both incidents occurred in the strangers’ bar in the Commons.

Sir Stephen Irwin, the chair of the IEP, said:

The most striking aggravating factor [in relation to the first complaint] was the ‘power gradient’ between an MP and a junior member of staff. The most striking aggravating factor [in relation to the second one] was the racial overtone in the verbal abuse. In relation to both episodes, it was clear that very marked abuse of alcohol was at the root of events.

As to mitigating factors, it was clear that the respondent had accepted what he had done, and fully agreed that what he did was far below any acceptable level of conduct. He also acknowledged that he had been heavily abusing alcohol at the time. Since then he had stopped consuming alcohol completely, and had maintained his abstention for the year following the complaints.

Sue Gray appointment raises 'tricky questions' about trust between ministers and civil servants, says IfG thinktank

Alex Thomas, a former civil servant who now works at the Institute for Government thinktank, has been giving interviews about the propriety of the Sue Gray appoinment this morning. Here are some of the main points he has been making.

• Thomas described the appointment of Gray as chief of staff to Keir Starmer as “unusual” and “surprising”. He told the Today programme:

I do think this is unusual, it’s surprising. Although civil servants have crossed the aisle before – Jonathan Powell for Tony Blair, or others – I mean, it hasn’t happened before with a civil servant who was still serving of this seniority and with the public profile and career history in the deep centre of government that Sue Gray has.

• He said the appointment “raises quite tricky questions for the civil service in the long term about the trust of relationship between ministers and civil servants”.

• He said it was important for Gray to stress that she would not be divulging confidential information she obtained when she was in government. He told Times Radio:

Sue Gray can’t unknow what she knows. And if she does this job, I do think she needs to be very clear she’s not going to share details of the work that she did in government.

• But Thomas rejected suggestions that the appointment meant Gray might have acted in a biased manner as a civil servant. Thomas said that he had worked with her, and that he had always seen her “behave entirely impartially and equally robustly with ministers and political advisers of any party”.

'Utterly ludicrous' to claim hiring Sue Gray means Partygate report was biased, says Labour

Good morning. Conservative MPs are furious this morning about the news that Sue Gray, the civil servant who led the Partygate investigation, has been poached by Labour to work as Keir Starmer’s chief of staff. It is not that unusual for civil servants, who have to be impartial, to go to work for political parties, where, by definition, they are not. The most prominent example is Jonathan Powell, who left a senior job at the Foreign Office to become Tony Blair’s chief of staff two years before an election that Blair seemed certain to win. Gray is following his example, and presumably she hopes the comparison holds. Powell lasted 10 years in Downing Street, and was one of the most influential figures in that administration.

But there are some differences, which do raise legitimate questions about the appointment. Gray was at permanent secretary level, making her more senior than Powell was. At one stage she was the head of propriety and ethics at the Cabinet Office, which means she knows more about ministers’ secrets than almost anyone. And she oversaw the Partygate investigation into Boris Johnson, which contributed to his downfall. The Cabinet Office is concerned that she may have accepted the job before notifying the advisory committee on business appointments and yesterday it said it was “reviewing the circumstances under which she resigned”.

Looking ahead, there are concerns that in the future she might use confidential information she has to benefit the Labour party. But there are plenty of people who do jobs that give them access to privileged information, and then change jobs or careers but continue to respect the obligations of confidentiality from their previous employment. Civil servants are no different.

The more outlandish, wacky and conspiratorial concerns about the Gray appointment this morning involve looking behind, and asking whether this means Gray was biased against Johnson all along. This theory has ended up on the Daily Mail front page.

As Jessica Elgot and Peter Walker report in our overnight story, Johnson’s allies are now trying to argue that the Gray appointment means the whole Partygate scandal was bogus, and that the Commons inquiry into claims Johnson misled MPs about it should be abandoned.

Lucy Powell, the shadow culture secretary, and a former chief of staff to Ed Miliband, has been giving interviews for Labour today. She told the Today programme that it was “utterly ludicrous” to suggest the Labour appointment discredited the findings of the Gray report. Powell said:

The suggestion that somehow this [appointment] colours Sue Gray’s independent and impartial reports into Partygate and all those other matters are really utterly ludicrous.

She wasn’t the one wheeling the suitcases of booze into Number 10. And the prime minister at the time, Boris Johnson, and most of his acolytes at the time were at pains to tell us what a formidable and impartial and independent civil servant Sue Gray was.

It is also worth pointing out that no one has provided any evidence to suggest the facts or findings in the report were flawed. At the time, many in Westminster felt Gray had, if anything, been soft on the prime minister, for example by declining to investigate in detail reports that his wife, Carrie, hosted a party with loud Abba music in their private Downing Street flat on the day Dominic Cummings resigned.

There will be much more on this as the day goes on. We are getting a lobby briefing too, and MPs are debating private members’ bills, but otherwise the diary is relatively empty.

I’ll try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

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