Boris Johnson misled British lawmakers over lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street, the residence and office of the prime minister, during the Covid-19 pandemic, a powerful committee concluded on Thursday, releasing publicly the findings that prompted Mr. Johnson’s angry resignation from Parliament last week.
The lengthy document, produced by the House of Commons privileges committee, offered a damning verdict on Mr. Johnson’s conduct, honesty and integrity, concluding that his conduct was deliberate and that he had committed “a serious contempt” of the House.
“We came to the view that some of Mr. Johnson’s denials and explanations were so disingenuous that they were by their very nature deliberate attempts to mislead the Committee and the House, while others demonstrated deliberation because of the frequency with which he closed his mind to the truth,” the report said.
Mr. Johnson was sent a draft of the report last week and promptly resigned from the House of Commons, characterizing the committee investigating him as a “kangaroo court” bent on a politically motivated witch hunt against him. In fact, most of its members are from the Conservative Party, which Mr. Johnson led until last year, and two are prominent supporters of Brexit, his flagship policy.
The privileges committee, which polices some internal parliamentary matters, had the power to recommend a suspension from Parliament that might have forced Mr. Johnson into an election to retain his seat. Confronted by that uncertainty-laden prospect, Mr. Johnson quit rather than risk his track record as an election winner.
But in denouncing the committee, Mr. Johnson only seemed to have hardened its judgment. Its members have been offered added security following comments questioning their impartiality made by the former prime minister and his supporters.
In light of Mr. Johnson’s reaction, the committee recommended that the former prime minister should have his parliamentary pass revoked, preventing him from visiting Parliament as he would normally be entitled to do. Had he remained as a lawmaker, the committee would have recommended a 90-day ban from Parliament — a severe punishment that has been rendered moot by Mr. Johnson’s resignation.
The document released on Thursday examined in detail the veracity of Mr. Johnson’s account of how he and his senior aides behaved during the pandemic. Even as rumors circulated of parties and social mixing in violation of the rules, Mr. Johnson told Parliament that he had received assurances that all lockdown rules were complied with in Downing Street.
Yet ultimately Mr. Johnson became the first sitting prime minister to be fined by the police for breaking the law. More revelations emerged, and the “partygate” scandal became one of several that contributed to his resignation under pressure as prime minister last year.
The issue at stake for the committee was not the rule-breaking, but the way Mr. Johnson had denied it. Lawmakers regard a failure to tell the truth to Parliament as such a serious matter, because without accurate information from ministers they cannot effectively hold the executive to account — an important part of their job.
When Mr. Johnson appeared before the committee in March, he acknowledged making misleading statements in Parliament when he assured lawmakers earlier that there was no breach of lockdown rules. But he denied knowingly making misstatements. “I am here to say to you, hand on heart, that I did not lie to the House,” he said at the time. “When those statements were made, they were made in good faith on the basis of what I honestly knew and believed at the time.”
Yet Mr. Johnson accepted that he could not recall being given specific reassurances by any of his most senior civil servants that lockdown rules and guidance had been observed at all times in Downing Street.
Instead, he cited advice from two political aides, prompting the committee chair, Harriet Harman, to ask Mr. Johnson whether he had relied on “flimsy” reassurances.
He also rejected a charge that he had been reckless in his statements. In doing so, he perhaps closed off one potential route for the committee to recommend a lesser punishment for him, one that might have allowed him to stay in Parliament without the risk of an election.
Since his ouster from Downing Street last year, Mr. Johnson has made little secret of wanting his old job back and, on announcing his resignation from Parliament on Friday, he added the proviso that he was quitting the House of Commons “for now.” Without a seat, a political comeback — which anyway looks unlikely — would be impossible.
But his latest setback has revealed the limits of his support among Conservative lawmakers, with relatively few of them rallying to his defense.
The resignation of Mr. Sunak from Mr. Johnson’s cabinet last year helped precipitate his departure from Downing Street, and this week tension between the two exploded into a public rift over the seemingly esoteric issue of nominations to the House of Lords, Parliament’s unelected second chamber.
Departing prime ministers have the right to propose candidates for a place in the Lords, known as a peerage, but candidates must resign their seats in the House of Commons if they hold them. When, after months of delay, Mr. Johnson’s nominees were vetted, three of them did not pledge to do so, because they were under the impression that they could remain in the Commons until the next general election, effectively delaying their peerages.
The issue was discussed at a recent meeting between Mr. Sunak and Mr. Johnson, but they came away with different understandings of what was agreed to. The outcome was that the three lawmakers, including Nadine Dorries, a former cabinet minister and staunch ally of Mr. Johnson, were left off the list that was ultimately approved.
Asked about the episode on Monday, Mr. Sunak suggested that Mr. Johnson had wanted him to bend the rules for nominations or — as he put it — “to do something I wasn’t prepared to do.” Mr. Johnson responded hours later with a statement that said, “Rishi Sunak is talking rubbish.”
Stephen Castle
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