Partygate report: key findings of Commons privileges committee

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The House of Commons privileges committee has found that Boris Johnson repeatedly misled MPs when he told them he knew nothing about lockdown-breaking social gatherings in and around Downing Street. These are the main points of a highly damning and hugely detailed report.

Key findings on wrongdoing

Johnson was found to have committed five serious offences:

1. Deliberately misleading the Commons, when he repeatedly said that either no Covid rules were broken, or that he had been assured none were broken.

2. Deliberately misleading the privileges committee when he reiterated the same argument.

3. Breaching confidence, by leaking part of the report in advance in his letter last Friday announcing his departure as an MP.

4. “Impugning” the committee, and thus parliamentary processes.

5. Complicity in a “campaign of abuse and attempted intimidation of the committee”.

The punishment

If Johnson had not resigned as an MP, the committee would have recommended a 90-day suspension from parliament – extremely long, and well beyond the threshold needed for his constituents to have sought a byelection.

The original recommendation was to have ben a 20-day suspension, still well beyond the 10-day minimum for a possible byelection. This was increased after Johnson letters resigning as an MP on Friday, which revealed parts of the findings and condemned the process as unfair and biased.

The committee has recommended that he should not be given a pass allowing him access to parliament as an ex-MP, a traditional privilege.

The punishment could have been greater

Minutes of the committee’s final pre-publication meeting on 13 June show that two MPs – Labour’s Yvonne Fovargue and Allan Dorans of the SNP – sought to amend the punishment so Johnson was expelled altogether from parliament. This was voted down.

The key section

Sixty pages into the report comes what is arguably the central section, summing up what Johnson did and why it matters:

The contempt was all the more serious because it was committed by the prime minister, the most senior member of the government. There is no precedent for a prime minister having been found to have deliberately misled the house.

He misled the house on an issue of the greatest importance to the house and to the public, and did so repeatedly. He declined our invitation to reconsider his assertions that what he said to the house was truthful. His defence to the allegation that he misled was an ex post facto justification and no more than an artifice. He misled the committee in the presentation of his evidence.

Johnson could face a new contempt inquiry

During the writing of the report, details emerged of alleged lockdown-breaking parties at No 10 and at Chequers, the prime ministerial country retreat. The committee said they did not want to delay their findings, and so accepted Johnson’s assurances that there was no wrongdoing.

They added: “If for any reasons it subsequently emerges that Mr Johnson’s explanations are not true, then he may have committed a further contempt.”

How Johnson misled MPs

The report said he did this by:

Saying guidance was followed fully at No 10, and that this had been the case when he attended gatherings.

Failing to tell the Commons about his own knowledge of gatherings where rules or guidance was broken.

Saying he relied on assurances from officials and others that rules had not been broken. These “were not accurately represented by him to the house”, the report found, and were not properly authoritative, and should not have been given as proof of compliance.

Saying he could not answer questions before the issues had been investigated by Sue Gray, the senior civil servant who initially reported on the parties, when he already had personal knowledge he did not reveal.

Purporting to correct the record, but instead continuing to mislead, and also misleading the committee with continued denials.

Being “deliberately disingenuous when he tried to reinterpret his statements to the house to avoid their plain meaning”, for example making “unsustainable interpretations” of Covid rules to justify gatherings.

Findings on the social gatherings

The report examined the various events at the centre of the debate, and was largely damning about the idea they were within the rules. On the 20 May 2020 “bring your own booze” garden party, the committee concluded: “We do not consider that a social gathering held purely for the purpose of improving staff morale can be regarded as having been essential for work purposes.”

It dismissed the argument that leaving drinks were needed to boost work morale, saying “organisations across the UK were suffering severe staff morale pressures”.

On Johnson’s brief birthday event in June 2020, for which he was given a fixed-penalty notice, the report cites the former PM’s protestations of bafflement, adding: “We note that he had the right in law to decline to accept the FPN if he had wished to assert he had committed no offence, but that he chose not to do so.”

Other evidence about the No 10 culture

In a supplement of additional material, released by the committee with the report, a Downing Street official who is not named gives damning evidence about what they saw as a culture of Covid rule breaking.

The official said that Wine Time Fridays “were calendared weekly events in our Outlook diaries starting at 4pm, where press officers would gather on Fridays to have drinks”. They went on:

During the pandemic No 10, despite setting the rules to the country, was slow to enforce any rules in the building. The press office Time Fridays continued throughout, social distancing was not enforced, and mask wearing was not enforced.

I was enquired to [name redacted] in March 2020 whether we should be wearing masks and was told that the scientific advice was that there was ‘no point’ and had ‘very little effect on the spread of Covid’.

This was all part of a wider culture of not adhering to any rules. No 10 was like an island oasis of normality. Operational notes were sent out from the security team to be mindful of the cameras outside the door, not to go out in groups and to social distance. It was all a pantomime.

Birthday parties, leaving parties and end of week gatherings all continued as normal. Those responsible for the leadership of No 10 failed to keep it a safe space and should have set rules from the start that these gatherings should not continue.”

What Johnson said about the gatherings

The report lists a series of occasions in the Commons when Johnson said he knew personally of no rule-breaking, and had been assured none had taken place. Among these were prime minister’s questions on 1 December and 8 December 2021, shortly after the Mirror first reported claims about the parties.

At the 8 December session, the then-PM said he had been “repeatedly assured since these allegations emerged that there was no party and that no Covid rules were broken”.

What the committee found on the assurances

A lengthy section of the report examines who did in fact assure Johnson that rules had been followed, finding that the only people who can be said “with certainty” to have done that were Jack Doyle and James Slack, both former Daily Mail journalists who worked as Johnson’s head of communications – Slack had previously held the civil service role of official spokesperson.

The report notes: “Both men were concerned chiefly with media-handling and both were, at different times, political appointees of Mr Johnson in that role.”

Whether Johnson’s denials were credible

This is the crux of the report, and the committee’s findings were clear and extremely critical: they found it “highly unlikely that Mr Johnson, having given any reflection to these matters, could himself have believed the assertions he made to the house at the time when he was making them, still less that he could continue to believe them to this day”.

It added: “Someone who is repeatedly reckless and continues to deny that which is patent is a person whose conduct is sufficient to demonstrate intent.”

This is, essentially, a judgment call, something Johnson and his allies see as a flaw with the process. But the report is convincing in its logic.

How Johnson was in contempt of the committee

In three ways. First, his resignation letter as an MP on 9 June, a day after he was handed a pr?cis of the report, revealed details of it.

Separately, he “impugned the committee, the integrity of its members, and the impartiality of its staff and advisers”, attacking not only their fairness, but alleging bias.

Finally, Johnson’s resignation letter attacked the committee as a “witch-hunt” and a “kangaroo court”. This happened, the report noted, even though Johnson had written to committee members after his evidence session before them in March to distance himself from such insults, adding: “I have the utmost respect for the integrity of the committee and all its members and the work that it is doing.”

The report said that the subsequent use of such terms in his resignation letter “leaves us in no doubt that he was insincere in his attempts to distance himself from the campaign of abuse and intimidation of committee members. This in our view constitutes a further significant contempt”.

Why Johnson’s offence was seen as especially serious

The report laid out what it said was the extent of Johnson’s culpability in misleading MPs, which it found was very serious. This was because of the former PM’s “repeated and continuing denials of the facts”, for example over the very obvious lack of social distancing at events.

It said Johnson was also to blame for “the frequency with which he closed his mind to those facts”, and the way he tried to “rewrite the meaning of the rules and guidance to fit his own evidence”, such as arguing that imperfect social distancing was better than cancelling an event.

The report also castigated Johnson’s “after-the-event rationalisations”, notably over the assurances he received from others. It added: “His view about his own fixed-penalty notice (that he was baffled as to why he received it) is instructive.”

Why the committee said this was important

The inquiry, they argued, “goes to the very heart of our democracy” given that people elect MPs to not just represent them but hold a government to account. It added: “Our democracy depends on MPs being able to trust that what ministers tell them in the House of Commons is the truth.”

The seven-strong committee said the key issue was failing to correct mistakes, as it was inevitable that ministers make mistakes “and inadvertently mislead”. They added: “When a minister makes an honest mistake and then corrects it, that is democracy working as it should.” What Johnson did, they emphasised, was very different.

How they reached the conclusions

The report stresses how fair and open the committee has sought to be with all evidence given on oath, with all documents submitted to the inquiry passed on to Johnson, with no redaction. Johnson knew the identities of all witnesses.

All evidence was first-hand, including emails, WhatsApp messages and photographs supplied by the government.

Johnson was also given warning of issues that arose from evidence submitted so he could provide his own written evidence in response, which he did. He was then shown the provisional conclusions of the report on 8 June.

The committee said: “There is no matter upon which the committee has reported that Mr Johnson has not had the opportunity to answer or comment upon.”