Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja
After a year-long investigation into whether former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, misled Parliament over Covid lockdown parties, the British Parliament yesterday released a 106-page report, disclosing that the former leader deliberately lied to the House of Commons.
The report found that Johnson misled the lawmakers by repeatedly telling them, after the “Partygate” scandal emerged, that Covid rules had been followed at all times in Downing Street.
t week, Johnson quit as a member of parliament before the report’s publication, accusing the privileges committee, a parliamentary standards body that had investigated him, of mounting a “witch-hunt” and behaving like a “kangaroo court”.
The former prime minister said it was a lie to say he deliberately misled parliament and called the report a charade.
But the committee offered a damning verdict on Johnson’s honesty and conduct, concluding that he had deliberately and repeatedly misled parliament.
“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 stated.
According to the Committee, a three-month suspension from the House of Commons for Johnson would have been recommended, if he had not resigned voluntarily.
“if he had not resigned his seat, we would have recommended that he be suspended from the service of the House for 90 days for repeated contempt and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process,” the report said.
It further found that Johnson had committed five contempt of parliament, including that he deliberately misled parliament; lied to the committee; breached the confidence of the committee; undermined the committee and the democratic process; and was complicit 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,” it added.
The parliament listed six events in Downing Street where lockdown rules were not observed and concluded that Johnson could not have believed that these were “essential for work purposes”.
It stressed that it is “unlikely on the balance of probabilities that Mr Johnson, in the light of his cumulative direct personal experience of these events, could have genuinely believed that the rules or guidance were being complied with”.
The report found that he had “personal knowledge” of breaches of the rules and guidance in No 10 and failed to proactively seek out “authoritative” assurances about compliance, which it said amounted to a “deliberate closing of his mind”.
It concluded it was “highly unlikely” he had really believed the assurances he gave at the time, “still less that he could continue to believe them to this day”.
A key bit of evidence came from Martin Reynolds, his former principal private secretary, a civil servant, who told the inquiry that, while preparing for a session of Prime Minister’s Questions in December 2021, he had questioned whether it was “realistic” for Mr Johnson to say rules had always been followed.
The committee also published new evidence, including a statement from an unnamed No 10 official that there was a “wider culture of not adhering to any rules” in the building.
The official added that birthday parties, leaving parties and end of week gatherings “all continued as normal” during the pandemic.
Johnson is the first British leader in modern history to be found to have intentionally misled his colleagues.
Telling lies in the House of Commons is considered a serious, potentially career-ending transgression that can lead to suspension or expulsion from Westminster.
