The House of Commons privilege committee has handed down a harsh ruling on Boris Johnson’s conduct in the Partygate scandal.
The seven-member cross-party commission released a 108-page report on Thursday following a 14-month investigation into the former prime minister.
The committee has been investigating whether Johnson deliberately misled parliament after he said as prime minister that Covid-19 rules had been followed after media coverage of a Downing Street party held during pandemic restrictions. Here are five takeaways from the report’s release.
1. Johnson ‘repeatedly defied’ Parliament
The privileges committee found the former prime minister was in repeated contempt of parliament by lying to MPs about having a party at Number 10 amid coronavirus restrictions.
MPs on the committee also concluded Johnson had engaged in “an attempted campaign of abuse and intimidation” against the committee.
The report found that some of Johnson’s denials and explanations were “deeply disingenuous and essentially deliberately misleading committees and the House,” while others “appeared to be thoughtful because he routinely kept his mouth shut about the truth.”
As Parliament manages its own affairs, the committee is mandated to determine whether Johnson is guilty of any offense of “contempt” – an offense defined as an act or omission to prevent or prevent the House of Commons from carrying out its functions, and any appropriate sanctions.
2. Johnson faces a 90-day suspension from the House of Commons
The committee said it would recommend that Johnson be suspended from the House of Commons for 90 days if he had not resigned as an MP on Friday, thereby preempting such an outcome.
The proposed sanction is nine times the suspension time needed to trigger the so-called recall petition, which would allow Johnson’s voters to call for a parliamentary by-election to remove him.
The tough sanctions were proposed to punish Johnson for repeated charges of contempt and “attempting to disrupt the process of Parliament”.
These included lying to the House of Commons and the committee, undermining the committee’s trust by publicly disclosing its draft conclusions last Friday, accusing the panel of integrity and complicity in intimidating MPs.
The official minutes of the committee’s meeting showed that SNP member Alan Dorrance and Labor member Yvonne Forvarger pushed for Johnson to be permanently expelled from the House of Commons, rather than suspended.
3. Parliament passes should be withheld
Given that Johnson resigned and was unlikely to be suspended from the House of Commons, the committee recommended blocking him from getting the pass to parliament normally granted to former MPs.
The sanction was imposed on former House of Commons Speaker John Bercow in 2022 after a report by an independent panel of experts found him to be a “serial liar” and a “serial bully” of parliamentary staff .
The House of Commons is poised to vote on Monday to approve the Privileges Committee’s report on Johnson and its recommended sanctions.
A free vote – where Conservative MPs will not be whipped to support a parliamentary motion on the report – will be a big test of how much parliamentary support he can still command at a low point in his political career.
4. Uncharted territory for former prime ministers
The Privileges Committee made it clear that Johnson’s “gross contempt” in deliberately misleading the House was “aggravated” because he was prime minister at the time.
“It found no precedent for a prime minister deliberately misleading the House,” the report said.
It acknowledged that the case would now set a precedent for “the standards of accountability and honesty expected of ministers in the House”.
MPs also found Johnson breached confidentiality requirements when he criticized the committee’s draft findings in his resignation statement on Friday.
Johnson’s actions “in itself constitute a very serious contempt in making this statement,” the report said.
5. Johnson hits back at committee
In a furious 1,680-word statement, Johnson mocked the Privilege Commission’s conclusions as “rubbish”, “lies”, “insanity”, “obviously absurd” and “a whole lot of nonsense”.
The former prime minister accused the committee of pursuing a political agenda.
He singled out committee chair and senior Labor MP Harriet Harman for expressing “prejudice” about his behavior at the partygate before the inquiry opened.
He also criticized committee member and long-time Conservative MP Sir Bernard Jenkin for allegedly harboring a “personal antipathy” towards him.
At the heart of the committee’s finding was that he lied to Parliament in the House of Commons send box, assuring Parliament that Downing Street had been complying with coronavirus rules, and Johnson reiterated his insistence that the rules were being followed.
He said he was still “baffled” that he had been caught breaking the law at a “so-called birthday party” in Downing Street during the lockdown, which he described as “lunching at my desk with the people I work with every day”. “.
Johnson became the first prime minister to be caught committing a criminal offense while in office when he attended a birthday party in Downing Street in June 2020 and was caught breaking coronavirus rules. In April 2022, Johnson was fined for partying.