Partygate report: key findings of Commons privileges committee
How Boris Johnson was found to have misled MPs and why report recommended a 90-day suspension from parliament
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.
Deliberately misleading the Commons when he repeatedly said that either no Covid rules were broken, or that he had been assured none were broken.
Deliberately misleading the privileges committee when he reiterated the same argument.
Breaching confidence by leaking part of the report in advance in his letter last Friday when he announced his departure as an MP.
“Impugning” the committee, and thus parliamentary processes.
Complicity in a “campaign of abuse and attempted intimidation of the committee”.
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.
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 were 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.
aying 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.
Read the original article at The Guardian