The Labour chair Anneliese Dodds has said Boris Johnson should face “political repercussions” if he is found to have misled parliament, as fresh evidence emerges over lockdown parties.
A cross-party interim report into Partygate released on Friday found there was significant evidence that Johnson misled MPs over lockdown parties and that he and aides almost certainly knew at the time they were breaking rules.
The report includes one witness saying the then prime minister told a packed No 10 gathering in November 2020, when strict Covid restrictions were in force, that “this is probably the most unsocially distanced gathering in the UK right now”.
Speaking to Sky News, Dodds said taxpayers should not foot the bill for Johnson’s legal fees during the Partygate inquiry and questioned Rishi Sunak’s continued support for the beleaguered former prime minister.
The government has so far covered Johnson’s Partygate inquiry legal fees.
“Ultimately, Rishi Sunak should not be supporting Boris Johnson in that way and I think that there should be political repercussions for Boris Johnson if he’s found to have misled parliament,” she said.
“The ability to impose that kind of sanction on Boris Johnson is in the hands of Rishi Sunak of course as the leader of the Conservative party. I just hope he has the backbone to ensure that action is taken.”
The Partygate report came from the Commons privileges committee, a seven-strong group of MPs, four of them Conservatives, which has been tasked with discovering whether Johnson misled parliament in denying any wrongdoing, and then if this was deliberate.
Although the 24-page document is only an interim report, intended to give Johnson notice of lines of inquiry before he testifies later this month, its wealth of new evidence has put pressure on the former prime minister and his allies.
In response to the report, Johnson said: “The reason there’s no evidence to show that I must have known or must have believed that illegal events were taking place is because I didn’t.”
In the same interview, Dodds also rejected any suggestion Labour’s move to hire the Partygate investigator and top civil servant Sue Gray is a distraction from the privileges committee inquiry into Boris Johnson.
“Sue Gray is a person of enormous integrity,” she said. “Someone who served in the civil service under ministers of a number of parties actually, someone who’s always served with that integrity.
“I’m really delighted she’s joining the Labour team at that point where we’re readying ourselves for government if the British public backs us at the next general election.
“What’s important to us as Labour, as ever, is that we see the same rules and approaches being applied to this, as she would see with any other appointment. That’s why the civil service procedures on confidentiality will be followed.
“It’s why the civil service watchdog Acoba will need to look at this, just as it would with any other appointment, and it’s quite right those procedures will be followed. They will be for Sue Gray, just as they would be for any other senior civil servant.”
