A summary of today's developments
The Commons privileges committee has implied that it will not publish the ‘case for the defence’ dossier it has received from Boris Johnson about its Partygate inquiry today. In a statement a spokesperson for the committee said: “The committee of privileges can confirm it received written evidence from Boris Johnson MP at 2.32pm on Monday. “The committee will need to review what has been submitted in the interests of making appropriate redactions to protect the identity of some witnesses. “The committee intends to publish this as soon as is practicably possible. The material will be published on the committee website.”
MPs investigating Boris Johnson over his Partygate denials are not expected to release their final report on whether he misled parliament until next month at the earliest, the Guardian has been told.
The Conservatives could lose more than 1,000 seats in the English local elections in May, on the basis of current polling, according to psephologists. In an article for the Local Government Chronicle, Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, two of Britain’s leading local election specialists, said the Tories will record losses on this scale even if the swing to Labour from the Conservatives is less in the local elections than current national polling suggests it might be.More than 8,000 seats across 230 councils in England are up for grabs on Thursday 4 May, making this the biggest set of election in the four-year local elections cycle.
In a statement about the settlement with Network Rail, Mick Lynch, the RMT general secretary, stressed that the union’s dispute with the train operating companies was still on. But he said he hoped this could lead to the government allowing them to make a better offer.
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, has said that its eight MPs will vote against the deal to revise the Northern Ireland protocol on Wednesday. But the party has been engaged in an extensive consultation on the proposal, and in his statement Donaldson said that voting against was indicative of the party’s “current” position. He said that the deal represented progress in some areas and that the DUP was still seeking “further clarification, reworking and change”.
Nicola Sturgeon believes the SNP will emerge after its leadership contest in a “stronger position”. She added she does not normally agree with Tony Blair, but she thought he was right when he said recently that social media was a “plague” on democracy. She said social media forces people “to speak first and think later” and encourages polarisation.
NHS strikes in Scotland have been averted after unions representing midwives and nurses voted to accept the Scottish government’s pay offer.
MPs investigating Boris Johnson over his Partygate denials are not expected to release their final report on whether he misled parliament until next month at the earliest, the Guardian has been told.
After the former prime minister submitted what was termed a “bombshell” 50-page dossier laying out his defence on Monday afternoon, sources suggested a verdict by the privileges committee would come after Easter.
With the Commons in recess until 17 April and local elections several weeks later, which the committee would not want to be accused of influencing, sources indicated a ruling may not be made until May.
When the final report is drawn up, Johnson will also be given two weeks to review it and respond. There are concerns that if the committee finds he did mislead parliament, then Johnson could use this period to build a campaign against it.
Legal experts have cast doubt on the UK’s claims of “possible reforms” to European court of human rights procedures that stopped an asylum seeker from being deported to Rwanda last year.
During a two-day visit to the country’s capital, Kigali, Suella Braverman told a selected group of government-friendly papers that she was “encouraged” by the government’s “constructive” talks with Strasbourg to reform court injunctions. An ECHR injunction last June prevented an Iraqi national from being deported from the UK to the east African country.
But legal scholars have questioned whether the Strasbourg court would weaken a mechanism intended to protect people facing an “imminent risk of irreparable harm”, with one warning that an apparent plan to ignore ECHR injunctions would be a “significant and dark turning point in [the UK’s] history”.
The government should offer free bus travel to all care leavers aged between 18 and 25, a Tory former education minister said.
Tim Loughton told the Commons the Chancellor should invest in “our social worker workforce”, insisting social care workers are the “fourth emergency service and we need much better workforce planning as we do in the NHS to make sure not only do we recruit more, but we keep them there as well”.
He added: “It’s a false economy not to be doing that.”
Conservative former Cabinet minister David Davis suggested there could be a second budget later this year and called on the Chancellor to look at “more growth” in future.
He told the Commons: “We are in a period of extraordinary global financial instability.
“Now I am a low tax Tory. I would have loved the Chancellor to have had a lower tax strategy.
“But I have to say, that the events of the last week (in the banking sector) have demonstrated that a very small-c conservative strategy is actually wise under these circumstances. The more the confidence of the markets in the Government, the better our prospects for the future.
“That being said, I would be completely unsurprised if we have to have another budget in the autumn because of the nature of the transitions, the changes that are now happening.”
NHS strikes in Scotland have been averted after unions representing midwives and nurses voted to accept the Scottish government’s pay offer.
Just over half of Royal College of Nursing (RCN) members voted in the ballot, with 53.4% of those voting to accept the offer equating to an average 6.5% increase in 2023/24.
Around half (49%) of members of the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) voted in the ballot, with 69% voting to accept the deal.
Last week, Unison and the GMB unions also voted to accept the pay offer.
The RCN said while the vote ends an immediate threat of strike action, a significant minority of members voted to reject the offer, demonstrating their “continued frustration and concern” about the ongoing staffing crisis in the NHS.
It called for the Scottish government to “live up” to its promise to reform the Agenda for Change and make nursing a career of choice once again.
Mark Harper told MPs: “They have made significant improvement, enough to justify an extension until October. Is there more to do, there absolutely is.”
He said: “The most recent cancellation rate is down to 4.2% which is the lowest level in 12 months, which is quite a clear improvement and I have said that needs to be sustained, which is why they have only got an extension until October.”
Harper added: “I have been very clear with them that they need to deliver improvement in the next six-month period. So, the figures do speak for themselves and they demonstrate an operator which is turning things around but still has more to do.”He said Avanti’s performance last summer and autumn was “terrible”, but added: “They have made significant improvements. They need to continue those improvements.”
On Avanti’s punctuality, he said: “Although they were back in the pack with the other train operating companies, they were at the bottom of the pack and they still had more work to do.”
Updated
Claims that Avanti West Coast has done enough to merit a rail contract extension were met with cross-party scepticism in the Commons.
Transport secretary Mark Harper has offered a further six-month contract extension to the operator, following the imposition of an improvement plan that he insists is working to improve the service.
But his remarks in the Commons of “significant improvement” were met by some MPs with tales of poor services and, in the case of one Labour MP, claims of being served mouldy food.
Conservative former minister David Jones (Clwyd West) said: “I was disappointed to hear from (the Transport Secretary) that he has decided to extend Avanti’s contract by six months.
“Avanti have been letting down the people of north Wales for far too long. And I had rather hoped that he would be coming here to say that he was terminating that contract.”
Conservative MP Virginia Crosbie is the Conservative MP for Ynys Mon said she was “concerned” by the extension, Labour MP Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) said: “Avanti have failed. They have failed spectacularly.”
Labour MP Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) said: “During the period of Avanti’s improvement plan, the operator had the highest proportion of trains running more than 15 minutes late on record.”
She added: “Why is the Government rewarding this gross incompetence with yet another six-month extension?”
Britain is “still miles behind where we need to be in exploiting the potential of the UK as a science and tech superpower”, shadow culture secretary Lucy Powell has warned.
On regulation, she told MPs: “It’s not just about investment, the UK should be at the forefront of regulation around new technologies. Making sure we’re the first to set the rules of the game, helping to attract businesses looking for certainty and a supportive regulatory framework.
“So that it’s our values shaping how new technology develops, rather than these choices being made in China or elsewhere. The mess over TikTok was just the latest example of the Government dragging its feet.
“We saw the same thing with Huawei where the Government failed to invest in our sovereign capabilities and then failed to predict the security concerns resulting in a chaotic and expensive unpicking of Huawei’s role in our national infrastructure.
“We have a chance to now get ahead of the curve in technologies and help secure our national resilience, so where is the regulation of digital markets that’s been promised for years? Where is the semi conductors strategy?”
At the weekend the Sunday Telegraph claimed Boris Johnson was about to unveil “bombshell” evidence would exonerate him over Partygate.
ITV’s Paul Brand, who broke some of the most important Partygate stories, is sceptical.
You do have to wonder… if Boris Johnson has a dynamite piece of evidence that he never misled and never deliberately broke any rules, why didn’t he put it in the public domain before he was forced to resign?
— Paul Brand (@PaulBrandITV) March 20, 2023
Admittedly committee takes us into new territory as witnesses are giving evidence under oath etc etc and private messages are being shared which weren’t previously published. But still… if there was an exonerating piece of evidence, why didn’t he give it to Sue Gray / police?
— Paul Brand (@PaulBrandITV) March 20, 2023
Vast majority of the evidence the Privileges Committee has compiled was already in the public domain. Would seem odd for Boris Johnson to have held back and resisted releasing a nugget of truth that totally alters the game. Though let’s see what he produces before we pre-judge.
— Paul Brand (@PaulBrandITV) March 20, 2023
That is all from me for tonight. My colleague Nadeem Badshah is now taking over.
Updated
Back to Boris Johnson, and Jason Groves from the Daily Mail says his allies have suggested the Commons privileges committee is not publishing his dossier today because it wants to hold back something that might support his case.
An ally of Boris Johnson accuses committee of 'sitting on' his evidence instead of publishing straight away, adding: 'Perhaps they do not like the strength of the arguments and evidence that it contains' https://t.co/eh20hXdKCQ
— Jason Groves (@JasonGroves1) March 20, 2023
But Sam Blewett from PA Media points out that the committee first asked Johnson for evidence last summer.
Allies of Boris Johnson have been urging the committee to publish the defence 'as soon as possible'
— Sam Blewett (@BlewettSam) March 20, 2023
Worth noting that he was first asked to provide written evidence in July last year https://t.co/fAopfPBIjK
Here is the full text of Nicola Sturgeon’s speech to the RSA earlier.
Tories could lose more than 1,000 seats in local elections on basis of current polls, experts say
The Conservatives could lose more than 1,000 seats in the English local elections in May, on the basis of current polling, according to psephologists.
In an article for the Local Government Chronicle, Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, two of Britain’s leading local election specialists, say that the Tories will record losses on this scale even if the swing to Labour from the Conservatives is less in the local elections than current national polling suggests it might be.
More than 8,000 seats across 230 councils in England are up for grabs on Thursday 4 May, making this the biggest set of election in the four-year local elections cycle.
But there is one consolation for the Conservatives as they prepare for what could be a dreadful night. With the King’s coronation taking place on Saturday 6 May, by Friday night the local elections are unlikely to be at the top of the news, whatever the result.
In their article, Rallings and Thrasher says:
It is the Conservatives who have the most to lose this time, defending four in 10 of all vacancies and overall control in 85 councils. The threat from Labour in more urban areas is all too clear, but recent council by-elections have also shown electors being willing to vote for whoever seems best-placed to oust the Conservative candidate. Opportunity knocks for the Liberal Democrats and Greens, too.
Taking the likely previous outcome in newly drawn wards into account, a 6% swing from the Conservatives to Labour since 2019 could see Conservative seat losses breaching 1,000 with Labour registering 700 or so gains.
Such a swing is rather less than current polling suggests, but even in the Blair era, Labour struggled to match its poll rating with local votes. Anything far outside those parameters will provide succour or pain accordingly.
Updated
Commons privileges committee suggests it won't publish Johnson's Partygate dossier until at least tomorrow
The Commons privileges committee has implied that it will not publish the ‘case for the defence’ dossier it has received from Boris Johnson about its Partygate inquiry today. In a statement a spokesperson for the committee said:
The committee of privileges can confirm it received written evidence from Boris Johnson MP at 2.32pm on Monday.
The committee will need to review what has been submitted in the interests of making appropriate redactions to protect the identity of some witnesses.
The committee intends to publish this as soon as is practicably possible. The material will be published on the committee website.
As my colleague Aubrey Allegretti reports, this makes publication today increasingly unlikely.
It is looking increasingly unlikely we will see Boris Johnson's Partygate defence dossier today.
— Aubrey Allegretti (@breeallegretti) March 20, 2023
Given it was submitted at 2:32pm, there's not thought to have been enough time today for the privileges committee's clerks and lawyers to have done all their due diligence.
Updated
Bringing back Boris Johnson as UK PM would be ‘a joke’, says polls expert
Bringing Boris Johnson back as Conservative leader would be seen as “an utter joke” by voters, who would not tolerate yet another change of prime minister, a leading elections expert has said. My colleague Peter Walker has the story here.
What Sturgeon said on how social media undermines democracy because it entrenches division and poisons debate
This is what Nicola Sturgeon said in her speech to the RSA about social media being a threat to democracy. (See 2.56pm.) The full speech does not seem to be available online yet, and so I’ll quote it in full.
She is not the first politician to say this, but she sums up the problem particularly well. And the argument is particularly powerful coming from her, because Sturgeon is seen as better at using social media (at least Twitter) than most other people in top jobs in British politics.
She said:
I have not often in my political career agreed with Tony Blair, but I did recently hear him expressed the view that social media is a plague on politics. And while I don’t agree that this is an inevitability, I do think it is the reality right now.
It is distorting debate. The sheer pace of rolling news encourages us to speak first and think later. Minor dramas become crises and then catastrophes in what can often feel like nanoseconds. Algorithms create echo chambers, they obliterate nuance and force us into binary positions that polarise even – sometimes especially – the most complex of of issues. The distinction between objective fact and subjective opinion has all but disappeared. Absolutely everything is contested, which makes finding common ground much, much harder.
And all of this is undermining rational decision making. Decision makers are under enormous pressure to take positions and respond to events at breakneck speed, with next to no time to weigh up complexities or uncertainties. The amplification effects of social media too often leads politicians to think that quite extreme positions are the view of the majority when they are most definitely not.
And then, of course, there is the abuse that is hurdled at anyone who puts their head above the parapet. Politics has always been tough. And I’m a great believer that it should be tough. But social media is creating an environment that, frankly, is harsher and more hostile, particularly for women and those from minority communities, than at any time in my political career. It gives racism, misogyny, sexism, bigotry generally – none of these new phenomena by any means – a platform and a vehicle. And if we’re not careful, it will drive the kinds of people we desperately need to see more of in politics and public life even further away.
Now, to be clear, I know we can’t turn the clock back. I’m not naive about that. Social media in one form or another is here to stay and no doubt it will go on changing and changing rapidly.
But I am firmly of the view that if it continues to dominate and shape, or rather misshape, debate in the way that it does know, if we continue to allow the negatives to outweigh the positives, we do risk destroying our ability to address the massive era-defining issues that the world currently faces.
So we must – and this is a personal view, but one I hold very strongly – we must as a matter of urgency rediscover and recharge one of the basic functions of democracy, to peaceably and civilly resolve our differences …
We cannot shy away from legitimate political, economic, social, or constitutional issues because they divide opinion or involve hard choices. Instead, for the sake of democracy, we must find ways of debating and resolving these issues with respect, reason, civility, and good faith.
Indeed, in my view, and this is based on many years now of experience, this probably is one of the most pressing issues confronting democracies everywhere. And the reason is simple: unless we improve the quality of our debate, discourse and decision making, and underpin it with reason and a degree of social cohesion, we will be increasingly incapable of finding solutions to the massive economic, social, environmental challenges we face. And we will certainly not be able to do so with anything like the consensus needed for implementing some of these solutions.
Updated
Sturgeon claims SNP will emerge after leadership contest in 'stronger position'
Q: How impressed have you been by the contest? And what will the voters think?
Sturgeon says the SNP has not had a leadership contest for almost 20 years.
And in the last 30 years, it has only had three leaders.
So this is an unusual position for the party to be in. But it is healthy, and it will lead to the party being in a “stronger position”.
Updated
Q: If the party is in a mess, who caused it – you or your husband, Peter Murrell, the SNP chief executive?
Sturgeon says the SNP is undefeated electorally. The polls show it is significantly ahead. The SNP is “in a position of electoral strength” that other parties would love to be in, she says.
Updated
Sturgeon is now taking questions from the floor.
Q: What do you make of Mike Russell’s comment that your party is in a mess? Should you stay as first minister a bit longer?
No, says Sturgeon.
She says Russell did not say the party was in a mess. He was talking about the process.
She says she is not endorsing any candidate. She will back whoever wins.
Q: Are we winning the battle on climate change?
No, says Sturgeon. She says that is very depressing. If things do not change, climate change will win.
She says this illustrates the point she made in her speech; you have to take on established thinking, she says.
She is often described as anti-business, she says. She says she isn’t. But businesses do not exist in a vaccum.
She describes today’s IPCC report as a wake-up call.
Sturgeon is now doing a Q&A. Andy Haldane, the RSA chief executive, is asking the questions.
Q: What advice would you give your 16-year-old self?
Sturgeon says at heart she is an introvert. She has had to overcome that.
When she was young, she probably took herself too seriously, she says. She says now she is retiring, at the age of almost 53, she can have more fun. She jokes that her advice would have been, “don’t leave it to 53 to have fun”.
Updated
Sturgeon says, when dealing with Covid, and holding press conferences every day, she learnt that the public is much better at dealing with nuance than politicians assume.
She says she thinks leaders should be willing to embrace complexity, and explain it to people.
And she says politicians should be willing to risk doing things that are difficult and controversial.
Sturgeon says social media is threat to democracy because it makes rational decision making much harder
Sturgeon says she does not normally agree with Tony Blair, but she thought he was right when he said recently that social media was a “plague” on democracy.
She says social media forces people “to speak first and think later”. It encourages polarisation, and breaks down the distinction between fact and opinion, she says.
She says it makes rational decision making much harder, and it “often leads politicians to think that quite extreme positions are the view of the majority when they are most definitely not”.
And it also leads to politicians facing abuse, she says. She says politics has always been tough, and should be tough.
But social media is creating an environment that, frankly, is harsher and more hostile, particularly for women and those from minority communities than at any time in my political career.
She goes on:
I am firmly of the view that if [social media] continues to dominate and shape – or rather mis-shape – in the way that it does know, if we continue to allow the negatives to outweigh the positives, we do risk destroying our ability to address the massive era-defining issues that the world currently faces.
That is why it is essential to find a peaceful and civil way of resolving differences, she says.
Updated
Sturgeon says the SNP leadership election has been “somewhat fractious”.
But this is a moment for the SNP to “change, refresh and renew”, she says.
The party is electing a new leader “from a position of electoral strength”.
But it has to be careful it does not “throw the baby out with the bathwater”, he says.
She says she is firmly of the view that her party will emerge from this “in a strong position”.
Updated
Nicola Sturgeon is now delivering what is being billed as her last major speech as Scotland’s first minister. Her successor will be announced a week today.
There is a live feed at the top of the blog.
Updated
Privileges committee receives submission from Johnson about Partygate inquiry
The Boris Johnson submission, setting out why he thinks he did not commit a contempt of parliament in what he told MPs about Partygate, has now been received by the privileges committee, a source close to the process has revealed.
Jane Merrick from the i and Lizzy Buchan from the Mirror are also hearing that we may not get the Boris Johnson dossier to the Commons privileges committee until tomorrow.
NEW: Westminster may have to bate its breath a bit longer for Boris Johnson's partygate dossier to be published - I understand it may not be out until tomorrow or even Weds morning: https://t.co/MwNlJuEAun
— Jane Merrick (@janemerrick23) March 20, 2023
No sign of Boris Johnson's bombshell Partygate defence dossier - understand it hasn't made it to the Privileges Committee yet.
— Lizzy Buchan (@LizzyBuchan) March 20, 2023
Tomorrow sounding a bit more likely
James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, has announced that he will meet the EU’s Maroš Šefčovič on Friday to formally adopt the Windsor framework, the revised version of the Northern Ireland protocol, PA Media reports.
Mick Lynch says next week's rail strikes still on, despite deal with Network Rail, because dispute with train firms continuing
In a statement about the settlement with Network Rail, Mick Lynch, the RMT general secretary, stressed that the union’s dispute with the train operating companies was still on. But he said he hoped this could lead to the government allowing them to make a better offer.
Lynch said:
Strike action and the inspiring solidarity and determination of members has secured new money and a new offer which has been clearly accepted by our members and that dispute is now over.
Our dispute with the train operating companies remains firmly on and our members’ recent highly effective strike action across the 14 train companies has shown their determination to secure a better deal.
If the government now allows the train companies to make the right offer, we can then put that to our members, but until then the strike action scheduled for March 30 and April 1 will take place.
The ball is in the government’s court.
Updated
RMT votes to accept Network Rail pay offer
Members of the RMT union have voted to accept a pay offer from Network Rail, my colleague Gwyn Topham reports.
Jeffrey Donaldson says DUP will vote against NI protocol deal on Wednesday
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, has said that its eight MPs will vote against the deal to revise the Northern Ireland protocol on Wednesday.
But the party has been engaged in an extensive consultation on the proposal, and in his statement Donaldson said that voting against was indicative of the party’s “current” position. He said that the deal represented progress in some areas and that the DUP was still seeking “further clarification, reworking and change”.
He said:
Since the announcement that the “Stormont brake” is to be debated and voted upon in parliament on Wednesday there have been a number of indications that this vote will be read as indicative of current positions on the wider Windsor framework package.
Our party officers, the only decision-making mechanism in our party on these matters, met this morning and unanimously agreed that, in the context of our ongoing concerns and the need to see further progress secured, whilst continuing to seek clarification, change and reworking, that our members of parliament would vote against the draft statutory instrument on Wednesday.
We will continue to work with the government on all the outstanding issues relating to the Windsor framework package to try to restore the delicate political balances within Northern Ireland and to seek to make further progress on all these matters.
Some Tory Brexiters have said that the position of the DUP would be crucial in deciding whether or not they could back the deal, and so this decision will increase the chance of some Conservatives voting against the deal too.
There is no prospect of Rishi Sunak losing, because Labour will vote with the government. But a large revolt would undermine his authority, and revive claims that party divisions on Brexit are irreconcilable.
Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA
Updated
No 10 backs Mordaunt in saying Tories should not be trying to obstruct work of privileges committee
Downing Street has backed Penny Mordaunt, leader of the Commons, in urging Conservatives not to attack the privileges committee’s investigation into Boris Johnson. The PM’s spokesperson told journalists this morning:
We think this is a committee that’s carrying out a function asked to by parliament, it’s a parliamentary matter, and the leader of the house set out how we would want parliamentarians to engage with it.
Some Conservatives believe the inquiry is rigged against Johnson, and some of the coverage in pro-Tory papers has amplified this view. Conservative Post, an obscure Tory website, is urging its readers to send a standardised email the four Conservative MPs who sit on the committee expressing their “deep concern and disappointment” about the MP’s participation in the “Labour-led investigation” and urging them to resign from the committee to protect their “integrity”.
Peter Cruddas, a former Tory treasurer who was given a peerage by Boris Johnson even though the House of Lords Appointments Commission expressed propriety concerns, has also been using his Twitter feed to attack the inquiry. He posted this this morning.
Surely it is time for #rishisunak to intervene because there is a conflict of interest.
— Lord Cruddas of Shoreditch (@peteratcmc) March 20, 2023
The Privileges Committee should not proceed until the Sue Gray story around her report is cleared up.
Stop treating the electorate with contempt. https://t.co/YhdJLeqaoO
Lord Cruddas also heads the Conservative Democratic Organisation, which argues for more grassroots democracy in the party but which is widely seen as a closet ‘bring back Johnson as leader’ campaign.
Mordaunt seemed to be referring to Cruddas in the Commons on Thursday last week when she urged all parliamentarians to respect the work being down by the privileges committee. She said:
This house asked the committee to do this work. We referred this matter to the committee for it to consider; we asked it to do this work and to do it well, and it should be left to get on with it.
That is the will of this house, and I think a very dim view will be taken of any member who tries to prevent the committee from carrying out this serious work, or of anyone from outside the house who interferes.
On a personal level, an even dimmer view will be taken of anyone from the other place [the House of Lords] who attempts to do similar.
Updated
Downing Street has rejected a claim that government announcements are being held back this week because of all the media attention that the Boris Johnson privileges hearing will get. Asked about the claim (see 11.36am), the PM’s spokesperson said:
There is a large number of announcements being made this week, whether that’s on support for low-income households on energy, and obviously the vote on the Stormont brake on Wednesday so it is a significant week for government.
It’s wrong to suggest government business changes as a result of this committee hearing.
Why privileges committee could find against Johnson even it can't prove he deliberately misled MPs
Here is a question from below the line that is worth answering.
Some of the media coverage of the privileges committee hearing on Wednesday has implied that the hearing will focus on claims that he deliberately misled MPs – in other words, that he lied – when he said the Covid rules were followed at all time in No 10 at staff gatherings. Although much of the hearing will focus on this, in fact the “charge” against Johnson is much wider.
The committee is investigating whether Johnson’s Partygate answers amounted to a contempt of parliament.
The focus on whether Johnson knowingly misled MPs is understandable because doing this is a breach of the ministerial code and a resignation offence.
But the committee is not in charge of policing the ministerial code, which is a matter for No 10. It investigates conduct which counts as “contempt of parliament” which is defined in Erskine May as:
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.
In a report published in July last year, which included a memo from Eve Samson, clerk of the journals, the committee said that misleading MPs could count as a contempt of parliament even if it was not intentional. It said that intention – ie, whether MPs were misled deliberately – would be relevant when considering penalties.
In its most recent report, published earlier this month, the committee summed up its position in this way:
This inquiry is considering: what Mr Johnson said to the house; whether what he said was correct or whether it was misleading; how quickly and comprehensively any misleading statement to the house was corrected; and, if it is established that the house was misled, whether this actually constituted a contempt of the house by impeding the functions of the house or tending to do so.
If a statement was misleading, we will consider whether that was inadvertent, reckless or intentional.
If we conclude it was in any way reckless or intentional we will consider what sanction to recommend to the house.
It is now accepted by everyone, including Johnson, that MPs were misled. The report publised last month hinted that the committee thinks Johnson was at best reckless when he misled MPs, because he should have known that the rules had been broken, but the committee has not yet taken a final view on this.
The committee is also concerned that Johnson did not correct the record, when he realised MPs had been misled, by using the “well-established procedures of the Commons”. There are normally around 100 formal written ministerial corrections issued per session. Johnson never issued one over Partygate, although he did tell MPs verbally, after he was fined and after the Partygate report was published, that the rules had been broken – contrary to what he originally said.
Lord Pannick, Johnson’s legal adviser, argued in a submission to the committee last year, that it would have to show he had deliberately misled MPs to prove contempt. In the new submission he seems to be arguing that it has made up the offence of recklessly misleading parliament just to trap Johnson. (See 9.38am.)
But the committee argues that a misleading answer can be a contempt even if it was unintentional, and that there is no rigid, closed definition of contempt. In its report last year, it quoted this line from Erskine May:
It is … impossible to list every act which might be considered to amount to a contempt, as parliamentary privilege is a ‘living concept’.
Updated
Harry Cole from the Sun and Kitty Donaldson from Bloomberg are both saying there are now suggestions that the Boris Johnson Partygate dossier will not be published today.
Some suggestion that we might not see this so-called dossier of Privileges rebuttal until tomorrow after all - Commons have yet to receive it from Johnson and it will need thorough legal check etc...
— Harry Cole (@MrHarryCole) March 20, 2023
Why does it feel like its going to be a late night...
Told Boris Johnson's defence dossier hasn't reached Parliament's Privileges Committee yet, throwing into doubt whether it'll be published today
— Kitty Donaldson (@kitty_donaldson) March 20, 2023
A promised “major announcement” from Reform UK at a press conference in Westminster (see 10.55am) has turned out to be the return to the party fold of 11 MEPs who were in the Brexit party, its predecessor incarnation.
There had been speculation that Nigel Farage, spotted in the room where the event was taking place, could be taking a bigger role.
But while he did speak to the gathering, Farage stressed that his role remained “honorary and advisory”, and that Richard Tice remained in charge.
In his own speech, Tice said he believed there was a big opening for his party over issues such as immigration and Rishi Sunak’s revised Northern Ireland post-Brexit deal.
He then introduced a series of former MEPs, among them Ann Widdecombe, Ben Habib and June Mummery.
While big news in Reform UK circles, these are not names with Farage’s heft, so this feels a bit less than a gamechanger.
I’m in Westminster where Reform UK - successor to the Brexit party - are promising a “major” announcement. Nigel Farage is in the room. Fairly understated backdrop. pic.twitter.com/5NRsKh4irO
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) March 20, 2023
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As reported at 9.38am, the Daily Telegraph says that Boris Johnson’s dossier to the privileges committee will accuse it of trying to move the goalposts, by supposedly creating a new offence of recklessly misleading parliament.
Here are what some of the other papers are saying about the story.
Steven Swinford in the Times says the Johnson dossier will say that a judicial review would conclude that the privileges committee process was unlawful. He says:
His dossier includes a WhatsApp message from his director of communications at the time that he says substantiates his claim in the Commons that he had been assured no rules or guidance had been broken. It will criticise Harriet Harman, the committee chairwoman, for a series of tweets last year in which she suggested Johnson had misled the Commons and “knowingly lied”. The submission will suggest that these are evidence of political bias and effectively prejudge the inquiry.
Johnson will also argue that the inquiry should adopt a higher burden of proof and be required to establish that there is a “high degree of probability” that he misled the Commons.
His legal team, led by Lord Pannick KC, argues that if the inquiry’s findings were subjected to a judicial review they would be found to be “unlawful”. The committee is protected by parliamentary privilege so cannot be subjected to such a review.
It is ironic to see a Brexiter like Johnson suggesting that parliamentary process should be subject to oversight by the courts. The Brexiters normally champion parliamentary sovereignty, and famously in the past dismissed judges as “enemies of the people”.
Swinford says in the Times that Suella Braverman, the home secretary, has hinted that, if the committee were to propose imposing a sanction on Johnson, she would vote against. He says:
Yesterday Suella Braverman, the home secretary, became the first minister to indicate that she would oppose sanctions against Johnson but said she would reserve judgment until the committee had published its findings.
Asked whether she agreed with allies of the former prime minister that the inquiry was a “witch-hunt”, she said: “Boris Johnson was a really important leader. He got Brexit done, he delivered the Covid vaccine and he led the UK’s support for Ukraine and for all of those things I’ll be an admirer of his.”
No 10 has indicated that MPs will get a free vote on whether or not to endorse any recommendation from the privileges committee.
Jason Groves in the Daily Mail says Sue Gray, who wrote the Partygate report, started talking to Labour about taking a job with Keir Starmer in November last year, when she was still advising the Cabinet Office on how to respond to queries from the privileges committee about its Partygate inquiry. He says:
The newly unearthed contact with Labour will only further muddy already murky waters engulfing a Commons privileges committee inquiry being decried as a ‘witch hunt’.
One [Whitehall] source said: ‘Sue’s report had obviously been dealt with by November but she was still advising the government on the privileges committee investigation, specifically on what should be disclosed to them.
‘You don’t have to be Boris Johnson’s biggest fan to think it’s a bit dodgy to be secretly speaking to the leader of the opposition while still being intimately involved in such a highly sensitive and political matter.’
Hugo Gye in the i says some government announcements, covering the victims bill, energy security, and the review of the stage pension age, have been held back because No 10 knows the Johnson hearing will attract so much attention.
Updated
Reform UK is holding a press conference this morning. The Telegraph’s Jack Maidment says Nigel Farage is in the room, and the party might be announcing his return to frontline politics.
Looks and feels like today's big Reform UK announcement could be the return of Nigel Farage to the political frontline.
— Jack Maidment (@jrmaidment) March 20, 2023
He is in the room for the press conference and the party's YouTube stream has a holding title which states: "The Band Reforms" pic.twitter.com/MTRn4NHcWe
Reform UK is the successor to the Brexit party, which was led by Farage. Farage set up Reform UK, but for the last two years it has been led by Richard Tice. Currently Farage just holds the title of president.
DUP's Ian Paisley says he will 'categorically' be voting against Northern Ireland protocol deal on Wednesday
DUP MPs are meeting today, reportedly to discuss how they will vote when the Commons debates Rishi Sunak’s Northern Ireland protocol deal on Wednesday.
But Ian Paisley has already said that he will definitely be voting against, and that he expects the other seven DUP MPs to do so too. In an interview with the News Letter in Belfast, he said:
I am categorically voting against, and I would be surprised if my colleagues do not join me.
My initial reaction to the Windsor Framework was that I didn’t think it cut the mustard in terms of addressing our seven key tests (on restoring NI’s place within the UK internal market).
After taking time to study it and a least one legal opinion on it, and going through the details, and also having conversations and messages back and forward to the secretary of state, I am still of that opinion – that it doesn’t address any of our seven tests.
It is the old substance dressed up in a new package with a ribbon around it, but it hasn’t actually changed, or addressed the fundamental issue of Northern Ireland trade being disrupted in our internal UK market.
Paisley set out his opposition to the protocol deal last month, in the foreword to a report on it by the Centre for the Union, a unionist thinktank. That report, which included an opinion from John Larkin KC, a former attorney general for Northern Ireland, said the new deal fails the first of the DUP’s seven tests, which is that any deal must uphold the provisions on the Acts of Union 1800, which said all parts of the UK should be covered by the same rules on trade.
Paisley and his fellow DUP MP Sammy Wilson have always been particularly hostile to the protocol. Other DUP MPs are thought to be more inclined to support it, or at least to abstain.
Kate Forbes says SNP turmoil confirms her argument party needs to change
Kate Forbes, the Scottish government’s finance secretary and SNP leadership candidate, has said the turmoil in the party exposed at the end of last week confirmed her view that it needed to change. On Saturday Peter Murrell, chief executive of the party and Nicola Sturgeon’s husband, resigned after it emerged that the party had misled journalists to cover up a 30,000 fall in membership figures.
In an interview with the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland, Forbes said:
I obviously strongly believe that the events over the last few days – which have of course hurt, and I think bemused, a lot of SNP members not least myself – have confirmed my calls from the very beginning of the contest, which is that we need change in the SNP, we need change in government and that change needs to be based on some very fundamental principles of honesty, competence, transparency.
I’ve said from the very outset that continuity won’t cut it, that the status quo wasn’t good enough and that we couldn’t just continue to go on as we were going on if we wanted different results.
And that’s not just about policy, it’s also about the delivery of those policies and the culture that accompanies it.
But Forbes also said she was not in favour of the contest being re-run. She said she had confidence in the process and wanted it to reach its conclusion, which is due with the announcement of the new leader on Monday 27 March, a week today.
My colleague Libby Brooks has a good article here on how people in Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch, where Forbes is the MSP, view her candidature.
Updated
Avanti West Coast’s contract extended but ‘more improvements needed’
Ministers have given another contract extension to Avanti West Coast, saying the poorly performing rail operator had made improvements to services that were scaled back drastically in recent months, prompting chaos and a customer backlash.
Here is the news release from the Department for Transport. And here is our story by my colleague Peter Walker.
Christian Wolmar, a rail specialist, says this shows how the current rail franchise system does not give the government a proper alternative if a provider is underperforming. “Just nationalise the lot,” he says.
The lack of options for rail contracts made stark: Avanti get an extension...just nationalise the lot! https://t.co/Vz8pFzjPib
— Christian Wolmar (@christianwolmar) March 20, 2023
Boris Johnson set to submit Partygate dossier, saying he didn’t deliberately mislead MPs
Good morning. Boris Johnson’s comeback prospects were never particularly strong at the start of the year and since Rishi Sunak unveiled his Northern Ireland protocol deal – which showed that Conservative MPs mostly want to move on from the Johnson-era war of attrition with the EU, as Johnson admitted himself in a revealing and defeatist speech – he has looked even more irrelevant to any serious debate about the party’s future.
But he still has an unrivalled ability to command media attention and, even though his appearance before the Commons privileges committee is more than 48 hours away, he is still dominating some of the front pages.
Metro: Boris's deadly dossier #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/fwtyHlzx6Q
— George Mann 🫧⚒️🫧 (@sgfmann) March 19, 2023
The i: Sunak delays key policies as Johnson takes
— George Mann 🫧⚒️🫧 (@sgfmann) March 19, 2023
centre stage #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/PWV5U7ycCc
Independent digital front page: Boris braces for Partygate showdown #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/y7bzxZtgMM
— George Mann 🫧⚒️🫧 (@sgfmann) March 19, 2023
Two and a half weeks ago the committee published new evidence about how Johnson may have misled MPs about Partygate. “The evidence strongly suggests that breaches of guidance would have been obvious to Mr Johnson at the time he was at the gatherings,” the committee said in its report.
Today, ahead of his evidence session on Wednesday afternoon, Johnson will submit a dossier to the committee making the case for the defence. The committee is expected to publish it, possibly this afternoon. The document will reportedly contain evidence backing up Johnson’s claim that, when he told MPs he thought the Covid rules had been followed at all times at gatherings in No 10, he was doing so in good faith, on the basis of advice from his aides. But it will also reportedly argue that the investigation is unfair.
In its story, the Daily Telegraph quotes “a source close to Johnson’s defence team” as saying:
The committee will find Boris did not mislead parliament. It has to be based on the evidence which is totally in his favour.
He has always said he didn’t mislead parliament and now he will be shown to be right. He is in good spirits and he has a great defence. He is up for it and confident.
The lawyers will say a lot about how unfair the process has been. We think the committee moved the goalposts on the definition of contempt, by bringing in a new idea of recklessly misleading parliament rather than deliberately misleading parliament.
We think there is absolutely no precedent for that. We think they have changed the definition because they discovered there was no evidence that Boris acted wrongly in any way.
The dossier is also expected to include claims that past tweets by Harriet Harman, the Labour MP chairing the inquiry, show she is biased. Conor Burns, a prominent Johnson supporter, made this accusation in an interview last night, as my colleague Peter Walker reports.
Here is the agenda for the day.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
2.30pm: Suella Braverman, the home secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
2.30pm: Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s outgoing first minister, gives a speech at the RSA in London.
3.45pm: Angus Robertson, the Scottish government’s constitution, external affairs and culture secretary, gives evidence to the Commons Scottish affairs committee.
Afternoon: The Commons privileges committee may publish the dossier from Boris Johnson rebutting claims he deliberately misled MPs about Partygate.
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