This is from the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice campaign group.
Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK
(@CovidJusticeUK)
When those of us who have lost loved ones heard of yet another party, this time evidenced with an email, many of us cried tears of anger, pain and frustration.
When the Prime Minister was questioned on it he laughed, smiled and smirked. https://t.co/Tx0WICL3Zn
And Lobby Akinnola, a campaigner from the organisation who lost his father Femi in April 2020, said that if Boris Johnson did attend the party on 20 May last year, his position was untenable. He said:
It’s blindingly obvious that Martin Reynolds has to go. If the prime minister was at this party then his position would be untenable. He’d have lost all moral authority to lead the country, after breaking his own rules that the rest of us followed, often at great sacrifice.
It’s beyond belief that the government seems to be suggesting a report is needed to determine whether Boris Johnson was at the event at all. He knows. The dozens of people there know. Why does the prime minister need someone to tell him whether or not he was at a party?
When this party took place, people couldn’t see their loved ones in their final moments. People couldn’t see friends and family. Last year Boris Johnson met with bereaved families in the Rose Garden, in the very site this booze-up took place, and looked us in the eyes and told us he had “done all he could” to save our loved ones. Now he needs to come clean to the country in a way that he didn’t with us.
The Commons public administration and constitutional affairs committee has this morning published a letter (pdf) it received from Lord Geidt, the PM’s independent adviser on ministerial standards, responding to questions from the committee about the Downing Street flat refurbishment inquiry.
In the letter, Geidt repeats the point he made in letters published last week about how concerned he was by the PM’s failure to disclose WhatsApp messages undermined. Geidt says:
The episode shook my confidence precisely because potential and real failures of process occurred in more than one part of the apparatus of government. These failures were not, in my view, due to a lack of investigatory powers, but rather they showed insufficient care for the role of independent adviser.
Geidt also restates his belief that, because the PM has agreed to review his powers, he will emerge from this affair with his status enhanced. He says:
I would expect by the time of my next annual report in April to be able to describe the role of independent adviser in terms of considerably greater authority, independence and effect, consistent with the ambitions for the office that the prime minister has set out.
Downing Street has not yet published details of how Geidt’s role may be beefed up.
The Conservative mayor for the West Midlands, Andy Street, whose mother died of Covid last year, has said news of a party at Downing Street during the first lockdown is “pretty incredible” and that he is “very hungry” to find out what happened.
Speaking to BBC Radio West Midlands, Street said he was shocked when he read the news. He said:
When I saw this I thought, I can’t really believe this, if I’m honest. It was May 2020, a time when we were all restricted. My idea of going out was to walk along the canal with one friend, frankly, and I’m sure there’s lots of people in the West Midlands who have their own recollections of what they were doing in May 2020. So yes, it is very difficult to believe.
He said he hoped an inquiry into Downing Street parties would determine who attended.
What we don’t know is whether the prime minister was there. I obviously can’t possibly comment on that, but that’s why the inquiry has got to come.
And I’m sure that when the inquiry finds out the facts, then the conclusions and the consequences will be acted upon.
Nicola Sturgeon has signalled Scotland’s stricter Covid regulations could be relaxed soon as she acknowledged a possible shift in strategy towards learning to live with the virus longer-term.
The first minister, who is due to update MSPs later today on Scotland’s Covid policies, said it was possible face masks could become normalised as society adapted to milder forms of Covid-19 becoming endemic.
That echoes similar signals recently from some health experts and UK government ministers, including Michael Gove, the levelling up minister, on Monday. In an interview with STV, Sturgeon said for her, that still involved some longer-term adjustments to normal life. She said:
Sometimes when you hear people talk about learning to live with Covid, what seems to be suggested is that one morning we’ll wake up and not have to worry about it anymore, and not have to do anything to try to contain and control it.
That’s not what I mean when I say ‘learning to live with it’. Instead, what we will have to ask ourselves is what adaptations to pre-pandemic life – face coverings, for example – might be required in the longer-term to enable us to live with it with far fewer protective measures.
Sturgeon said the virus remained deadly for some; NHS services may need to be re-configured with more patients treated outside hospital. “One of the things that we’ve been looking at recently is different patient pathways for people with Covid, to enable people to be treated at home,” she said.
Sturgeon is expected to propose changing the strict crowd limits at public events from 17 January, as Scottish football returns from its Christmas break and the Six Nations rugby tournament due to involve Scotland facing England at Murrayfield in early February.
With evidence growing the Omicron wave has been less severe than first feared, and may peak in Scotland this week, Sturgeon acknowledged the pre-Christmas anxieties about the severity of this surge had not been borne out. She said that was partly due to the strict controls her government introduced.
Some of our projections pre-Christmas have not quite come to pass because we’ve managed to mitigate to some extent what the Omicron wave would otherwise have presented for us.
Good morning. Partygate has now got a lot, lot worse for Boris Johnson. It would be surprising if the number of Conservative MPs coming to the conclusion that they will have a better chance of reelection at the next election under a different leader has not increased overnight, or if those Tories already inclined to that view are not feeling a bit more certain this morning.
It was not as if partygate was not highly damaging, and even potentially career-threatening, in the first place. But the latest revelations – starting with Dominic Cummings publishing a blog on Friday saying that there had been a lockdown-busting party in Downing Street on 20 May last year (“I and at least one other Spad [in writing so Sue Gray can dig up the original email and the warning] said that this seemed to be against the rules and should not happen”), followed by the Sunday Times suggesting that Boris Johnson was there, and culminating in ITV’s Paul Brand publishing the email invitation sent by Johnson’s principal private secretary, Martin Reynolds – have taken this to a new level. Here is our overnight story summarising the situation.
Why is this so much worse? There are at least three reasons.
1) No 10 has been able to half-defend previous partygate allegations by claiming that they were essentially work meetings involving some drink late in the day. For some events, like the 18 December Christmas party, this defence was highly improbable. But it does not function at all in the light of the email invitation from Reynolds sent to staff ahead of the 20 May do. Reynolds wrote:
Hi all, After what has been an incredibly busy period we thought it would be nice to make the most of the lovely weather and have some socially distanced drinks in the No 10 garden this evening. Please join us from 6pm and bring your own booze!
Even Lord Geidt would have to conclude that this was an invitation to a party, not a work invitation.
2) Boris Johnson was almost certainly there himself. Witnesses have told journalists he attended, and he and No 10 have declined multiple invitations to deny this. That means that another key defence deployed until now in response to partygate – that Johnson did not know what staff might have been up to in what is a relatively large office complex – is no longer tenable.
3) The Metropolitan police, who have done their best to avoid being dragged into previous allegations, seem more likely to investigate this one.
Edward Argar, the health minister, has been doing the morning interview round on behalf of No 10. He refused to explain what happened, sticking to the No 10 line from Monday that these were all matters for the partygate investigation being conducted by Sue Gray, a senior civil servant. But he said that “appropriate disciplinary action” should be taken if Gray found the rules had been broken, and that he could understand why people were “upset and angry” about the reports.
But Labour said that Johnson had to explain himself now instead of just waiting for the Gray investigation to conclude. Angela Rayner, the party’s deputy leader, said:
Boris Johnson’s deflections and distractions are no longer tenable.
Sue Gray is a highly respected civil servant who will be carrying out an investigation to the highest standard.
But the truth is out now. Not only did Boris Johnson know about the parties, he attended them and he lied.
It’s time for the prime minister to stop hiding behind Whitehall inquiries and finally come clean.
Rayner is referring to the many times Johnson told MPs in the Commons that no rules were broken (although generally Johnson was talking in response to questions about Christmas parties, rather than partying at any time).
Ed Miliband, the shadow climate change minister, made a similar argument on the Today programme. He said:
It’s all very well that we are having Sue Gray’s inquiry, but the prime minister cannot run and he cannot hide. He’s got to answer. If I went to a party, I know I went to the party. He’s got to explain – was he at the party?
How can he possibly justify all of the things he said in the House of Commons – that no rules were broken, that he did nothing wrong? He is going to have to answer.
It speaks to a rotten culture at the heart of this government and the rotten culture begins with the person in charge.
And this is from Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary.
Wes Streeting MP
(@wesstreeting)
Ministers should not be on the airwaves defending Boris Johnson, let alone a minister in the Department of Health.
Let the Prime Minister do his own dirty work.
Johnson has done incalculable damage to trust and confidence in the Government’s health measures. Unforgivable.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Boris Johnson chairs cabinet.
10am: Lord Evans, chair of the committee on standards in public life, gives evidence to the Commons public administration and constitutional affairs committee on governance standards in the light of the Greensill affair.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
12pm: The Department for Education publishes pupil attendance figures.
12pm: Eluned Morgan, the Welsh government’s health minister, holds a Covid briefing.
After 12.45pm: MPs begin debating a Labour motion calling for VAT on fuel to be cut, and setting aside parliamentary time for a bill implementing this to be debated.
2.20pm: Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, gives a statement to the Scottish parliament on Covid.
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