House of Commons Committee of Privileges

“ I think it is impossible for a Committee, however hard its Members try, to perform the roles of investigator, prosecutor and judge/jury. That is of course a separate matter, and participants in any process are entitled to raise such objections. I trust and hope that those objections will be considered and addressed in full on their merits. But that in no sense undermines my trust and belief that the Committee will address the evidence with integrity and with impartiality. ”

“ I believe that that is the right thing to do. I think it is very, very sad that when the public need to hear clarity from their officials and from politicians, the Opposition parties are trying to muddy the waters about events, or non-events, of a year ago. That is what they are doing today.”
8 December 2021 [Catherine West] “Will the Prime Minister tell the House whether there was a party in Downing Street on 13 November?” [Boris Johnson] “No, but I am sure that whatever happened, the guidance was followed and the rules were followed at all times.” ”

“ Writing about events to mark the departure of staff in general, Mr Johnson stated:
My view has always been that thanking and encouraging staff, and maintain morale at No 10, was absolutely essential for work purposes. That is especially so in the midst of a crisis as serious as the Covid-19 pandemic. When we gathered occasionally to mark the departure of a colleague, it was my duty as the Prime Minister to say a few words of thanks. That is the job of any leader. ”

“ At the time we wrote to Mr Johnson, we had come to no final conclusions, since we awaited his response. In making his statement when he did, Mr Johnson knew that the Committee would be unable to make a substantive response until it had completed its inquiry, and his assertions would be unchallenged. We note that Mr Johnson does not merely criticise the fairness of the Committee’s procedures; he also attacks in very strong, indeed vitriolic, terms the integrity, honesty and honour of its members. He stated that the Committee had “forced him out [...] anti-democratically”. ”

“ We have concluded above that in deliberately misleading the House Mr Johnson committed a serious contempt. 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. ”

“ With regard to the Rules: the gathering had to be essential or reasonably necessary for work purposes. A workplace ‘thank you’, leaving drink, birthday celebration or motivational event is obviously neither essential or reasonably necessary. Mr Johnson is adamant that he believed all of the events which he attended and of which he had direct knowledge were essential. That belief, which he continues to assert, has no reasonable basis in the Rules or on the facts. A reasonable person looking at the events and the Rules would not have the belief that Mr Johnson has professed. ”

“ Why was Mr Johnson’s counsel not allowed to address the Committee? Under the rules of the House, only witnesses are permitted to address select committees. A lawyer representing a client is not a witness. No select committee appointed under public business standing orders, as is the Committee of Privileges, is permitted to hear Counsel without specific authorisation from the House. No proposal for the Committee to hear Counsel has been put to the House by the Government or any Member. ”

“ Just a few years after winning the biggest majority in almost half a century, that majority is now clearly at risk.
Our party needs urgently to recapture its sense of momentum and its belief in what this country can do.
We need to show how we are making the most of Brexit and we need in the next months to be setting out a pro-growth and pro-investment agenda. We need to cut business and personal taxes - and not just as pre-election gimmicks - rather than endlessly putting them up.
We must not be afraid to be a properly Conservative government. ”

“ Any act or omission which obstructs or impedes either House of Parliament in the performance of its functions, or which obstructs or impedes any Member or officer of such House in the discharge of their duty, or which has a tendency, directly or indirectly, to produce such results, may be treated as a contempt even though there is no precedent of the offence. ”

“ His personal knowledge of breaches of the rules and guidance, combined with his repeated failures pro-actively to investigate and seek authoritative assurances as to compliance issues, amount to a deliberate closing of his mind or at least reckless behaviour. We find 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. ”

“ In serious cases the House has the right to suspend a Member, or withhold their salary, or expel them. These sanctions require the explicit approval of the House on the basis of a motion. The House is thus the decision-maker in terms of punishment of a Member for contempt, just as only the House itself can finally determine whether a contempt has actually been committed. The role of the Committee is therefore to carry out a delegated power of investigation and to report its findings to the House, with recommendations for action where appropriate. ”

“ It is inevitable that Ministers make mistakes and inadvertently mislead, and when they do, they are expected to correct the record at the earliest opportunity. This happens routinely. When a Minister makes an honest mistake and then corrects it, that is democracy working as it should. There is no basis for any fear that the requirement to be truthful with the House has a “chilling” effect on the ability of Ministers to be candid with the House. ”

“ The Privileges Committee is there to protect the privileges of Parliament. That is a very important job. They should not be using their powers - which have only been very recently designed - to mount what is plainly a political hit job on someone they oppose. ”

“ Wherever the Committee had to make a procedural decision within its limited discretion it did so with the intention of being fair to Mr Johnson while balancing the need to rigorously examine the issues that arise on behalf of the House.
Contempt of the House is governed by the law of privilege. The categories of contempt are unfettered, that is, they are not fixed for all time and it is for the House to decide whether conduct that is alleged is a contempt or not. ”

“ The second principle in practice requires the investigation to be separated from the decision in any case where there are serious implications and for those who perform those roles to be separate in an inquiry of the kind that is conducted by the Committee of Privileges. ”

“ Evidence submitted by Jack Doyle, Mr Johnson’s Press Secretary at the time of this gathering and later Director of Communications, makes clear that at a later stage he was doubtful about the compliance of the gathering of 19 June 2020 with the Covid Rules. In WhatsApp messages with other No. 10 officials on 25 January 2022 he discusses that gathering and states that he was “struggling to come up with a way” that the gathering was within the Rules, and he was “not sure” it would “work” to suggest that it was reasonably necessary for work purposes. ”

“ We conclude that there is photographic evidence of Mr Johnson’s presence at an event on 13 November 2020 where there was no social distancing; that no mitigations are visible in the photographs; and that the Covid Rules and Guidance at the time did not allow a socially undistanced event to proceed purely for the purpose of maintaining staff morale, and that this would have been clear to Mr Johnson. ”

“ Without all possible efforts being made to redesign the event, to allow for social distancing of at least 1-metre with substantive mitigations, is non-compliance. This inability to maintain full social distancing would have brought into operation the clause in the Guidance relating to considering whether, in these circumstances, the event should take place at all. We conclude that Mr Johnson’s persistence in putting forward this unsustainable interpretation of the Guidance is both disingenuous and a retrospective contrivance to mislead the House and this Committee. ”

“ Mr Johnson has had repeated opportunities to set out his evidence about the facts and has availed himself of those opportunities, in particular in the submissions that he made after all written evidence was available and after he had been questioned in the oral hearing.
2. To illustrate the invidious and unjust position in which the Committee has placed me, I set out below a critique of just a few of the Committees’ findings. This is merely a handful of the errors and injustices with which the document is riddled. ”

“ In January 2021, the Rules in force for the prevention of the spread of Covid included restrictions on indoor gatherings of two or more people, and Guidance stated that there should be social distancing of 2 metres or 1 metre with risk mitigations in the workplace wherever possible, and that only absolutely necessary participants should usually physically attend meetings. [80] At a Covid press conference on 30 December 2020, Mr Johnson outlined the ‘Tier 4’ restrictions which were in force in London a fortnight later when the 14 January gathering took place. ”

“ Why have we so passively abandoned the prospect of a Free Trade Deal with the US? Why have we junked measures to help people into housing or to scrap EU directives or to promote animal welfare?
We need to deliver on the 2019 manifesto, which was endorsed by 14 million people. We should remember that more than 17 million voted for Brexit. ”

“ The standing orders of the House do not set out a list of sanctions which the Committee may recommend. In deciding on its recommendations the Committee will be guided by precedent wherever possible and appropriate. There are few relevant precedents. Erskine May makes clear that the House may punish acts or omissions for which there is no precedent as long as they fall within the definition of contempt. ”

“ However, it is the Committee that has scaled down what I said to fit its own conclusion by ignoring the sworn evidence of Sarah Dines MP, Andrew Griffith MP and Jack Doyle, corroborating my own evidence under oath, that I received additional assurances in meetings. There is no explanation for why their evidence is disregarded. ”

“ Even where the legal test of a gathering’s reasonable necessity for work purposes was met, the Guidance further required that “where the social distancing guidelines cannot be followed in full [...] businesses should consider whether that activity needs to continue for the business to operate”.
65. We note that organisations across the UK were suffering severe staff morale pressures during the Covid pandemic; we do not consider that this in itself provided a licence for Mr Johnson’s conveniently flexible interpretation of the Rules on gatherings, or the Guidance on social distancing. ”

“ Every select committee shall have leave to report to the House its opinion and observations upon any matters referred to it for its consideration, together with the evidence taken before it, and also to make a special report of any matters which it may think fit to bring to the notice of the House. ”

“ Moreover, if the event was work-related for “some of the time” then there is no basis whatsoever for finding that I must have seen a rule-breaking gathering at that precise moment, let alone that I would have recognised it as such. ”