Boris Johnson was “deliberately disingenuous” about parties in his residence, No. 10 Downing Street, during COVID-19 lockdown, a parliamentary privileges committee has found.
When news emerged about the parties, Johnson was asked several times about the parties at the House of Commons, but denied them every time. A privileges committee, with a majority from the Conservatives – the party that Johnson belongs to – was set up to look into the matter. An advance copy of their findings was shared with Johnson who resigned as a member of parliament rather than risk suspension, which would have eventually led to his ouster, if found guilty.
The scandal was quickly dubbed “Partygate” by the U.K. media.
The full committee report was published on Thursday and it has in fact found Johnson guilty.
The committee report summary states: “We established that Mr. Johnson had knowledge of the COVID rules and guidance; had knowledge of breaches of the rules and guidance that occurred in No. 10; misled the House.”
The report goes on to say: “When he said that he relied on repeated assurances that the rules had not been broken. The assurances he received were not accurately represented by him to the House, nor were they appropriate to be cited to the House as an authoritative indication of No. 10’s compliance with COVID restrictions.”
“When he purported to correct the record but instead continued to mislead the House and, by his continuing denials, this Committee,” the report says, adding, that Johnson was “deliberately disingenuous when he tried to reinterpret his statements to the House to avoid their plain meaning and reframe the clear impression that he intended to give.”
In response, Johnson has released a lengthy statement where he says that the committee report is “rubbish” and “lie.” “In order to reach this deranged conclusion, the committee is obliged to say a series of things that are patently absurd, or contradicted by the facts,” Johnson says. Elsewhere in his statement, Johnson variously describes aspects of the committee’s conclusions as “complete tripe,” “ludicrous,” “preposterous” and a “charade.”
