From 12m ago
The Conservative MP David Simmonds has said that, following the publication of the Sue Gray report yesterday, he has come to the view that Johnson should resign. Mollie Malone from Sky News has his statement.
Simmmonds has been highly critical of Johnson over Partygate before – on Tuesday he said it would be “very difficult” for Johnson to persuade MPs he did not lie to them about the parties – but this is the first time Simmonds has publicly called for Johnson to quit.
That means there are now three Tory MPs who have, for the first time, joined those saying Johnson should go follow the publication of yesterday’s report. The others are John Baron, who spoke out this morning (see 9.50am), and Julian Sturdy, who issued a statement yesterday.
In her overnight story on Tory reaction to the Gray report, my colleague Jessica Elgot says at least three more Tory MPs are thought to have submitted letters to Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the Tory 1922 Committee, asking for a vote of no confidence, over the last 24 hours. It is not clear yet whether those three are Sturdy, Baron and Simmonds, or other MPs.
Yesterday morning there were only 15 Tory MPs on the record as saying Johnson should go. But it is thought that more than 40 MPs have privately submitted letters to Brady demanding a no confidence vote. Once 54 letters are in (15% of the parliamentary party), a ballot will take place.
This is from Ben Riley-Smith from the Daily Telegraph on the Rishi Sunak announcement coming later.
The Conservative MP John Baron says that, in the light of what was in the Sue Gray report yesterday, he can no longer continue to support Boris Johnson.
Here is an extract from his statement:
For me the most serious charge against the prime minister is that of knowingly misleading parliament. Given the scale of rule breaking in No 10, I can not accept that the Prime Minister was unaware. Therefore, his repeated assurances in parliament that there was no rule-breaking is simply not credible …
A bedrock principle of our constitution is that we can trust the responses receive in parliament to be truthful and accurate. Parliament is the beating heart of our nation. To knowingly mislead it can not be tolerated, no matter the issue. Whether or not the Prime Minister is an asset to the party or the country of less importance.
Having always said I would consider all the available evidence before deciding, I’m afraid the prime minister no longer enjoys my support – I can no longer give him the benefit of the doubt.
Henry Zeffman from the Times has the statement in full.
We will be hearing more from Baron later because he tabled the urgent question on Afghanistan scheduled for 10.30am. (See 9.40am.)
There will be an urgent question in the Commons at 10.30am on the evacuations from Afghanistan (the subject of a particularly damning report by the foreign affairs committee this week). That means the business statement won’t start until after 11pm, and the Rishi Sunak statement will probably not start until after 12pm.
Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, will not be taking first minister’s questions today, she says, because she is still ill with Covid.
Good morning. Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, will later this morning announce a colossal cost of living support package, primarily intended to help people cope with soaring energy bills. He is not calling it the “emergency budget” that Labour has been demanding, but the size of the giveaway – at least ?10bn, according to overnight briefing – makes it more significant than many of the budget we’ve had over the last decade or so. But this is the third fiscal event on this scale already this year – after the ?9bn energy support package announced in February, and the spring statement, which included further giveaways worth around ?10bn – and we have not even had the 2022 budget. Spending interventions on this scale have become the new norm.
Sunak has been promising further support measures for a week, but no one at Westminster believes that its timing, less than 24 hours after Boris Johnson made his statement to MPs about the Sue Gray report, is a coincidence. Banging on about “dead cats” is one of the most hackneyed, and often erroneous, features of modern political commentary, but today it is fully justified.
As we explain in our overnight story, Sunak is going to announce a major U-turn, because he will announced a windfall tax having spent months rejected what has been Labour’s flagship economic proposal. But his announcement today may indicate a change of approach in another respect. In his speech in the Queen’s speech debate, and in other recent inteventions, Sunak has implied that he wants to focus help on the most vulnerable. Some of the measures announced today will be targeted at the poorest households, but the overnight briefing suggests there will also be a strong universal element too it as well, with every household in the getting extra support. In an interview on the Today programme this morning Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the public spending thinktank, questioned whether this was the right approach. He said:
For the poorest households it’s certainly very much needed. It’s extraordinarily hard to cope with that kind of increase in your energy bills and general inflation, not least because benefits have only risen by 3% this year.
Whether it’s needed for all households, I think, is more of a difficult point. ?100 pounds off for each household in the country costs, each ?100, costs something like ?3bn and a lot of that money, frankly, will go to households who don’t desperately need it. I’m sure they’ll appreciate it, but won’t necessarily need it.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.15am: James Cleverly, the Europe minister, gives evidence to a Lords committee on the Northern Ireland protocol.
Around 11.30am: Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, makes a statement to MPs about a multi-billion cost of living support package, partly funded by a windfall tax.
12pm: Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, takes questions from MSPs.
12.30pm: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
12.30pm: Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, appears on ITV’s Loose Women
After 12.30pm: Boris Johnson leads tributes to the Queen in a debate marking her Platinum Jubilee.
Afternoon: Sunak does a Q&A with people on a vist, as well as a social media Q&A with the moneysaving expert Martin Lewis.
2pm: Sir Stephen House, the acting commissioner of the Metropolitan police, gives evidence about the Partygate investigation to the London assembly’s police and crime committee.
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