Boris Johnson will have to appear in front of a Commons committee which will be tasked with looking at whether he deliberately misled Parliament. MPs did not vote on the matter after the Government withdrew its amendment to the motion.
The motion was tabled by Sir Keir Starmer who said it was based on the basic principle of "defending the simple principle that honesty, integrity and telling the truth matter in our politics". He said it was a principle "under attack" because the Prime Minister has been accused of "repeatedly, deliberately and routinely misleading this House over parties held in Downing Street during lockdown". He said that was a serious allegation because it amounts to a contempt of Parliament and will erode the faith in all politicians which will weaken democracy as a whole.
Sir Keir said that the Prime Minister had "stood before this House and said things that aren't true safe in the knowledge he won't be accused of lying because he can't be. He stood at DB and point blank denied that rule breaking took place, when it did".
Read more : More than three quarters of people think Boris Johnson lied about partygate
The government had briefed that it would table its own amendment but withdrew it on Thursday morning and removing the requirement for Conservative MPs to vote with their party meaning they would have had a free vote. But Labour, nor any of the opposition parties, pushed for a vote.
MPs debated the matter from 11.30am on Thursday, April 21, until just after 4.30pm.
The committee will not begin its work until the police's investigation is complete. No further updates on partygate fines will be issued by the Metropolitan Police until after May's local elections, the Met Police confirmed. A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: "Whilst the investigation will continue during the pre-election period, due to the restrictions around communicating before the May local elections, we will not provide further updates until after May 5." However Downing Street said that if the Prime Minister or Cabinet Secretary were issued with a fine they would make it public.
Plaid Cymru's Liz Saville Roberts spoke in the debate: "The Government were trying to kick this down the road with this abandon amendment. It just begs the question really, we're two weeks away from the local elections, were they more desperate to make sure the names of their MPs weren't on the record and that was the motivator. The Government live in hope that the public's memory be ruled by the news cycle and live in hope the public interest will move on. I believe the Government is fundamentally wrong in its belief. Everybody who made a personal sacrifice during Covid will remember their loss or their pain or their grief for the rest of their lives. It is engraven on our hearts .We are not going to forget. The Government may kick this down the road but we will not forget. The Prime Minister's behaviour will not be forgotten".
Labour's Newport West MP Ruth Jones told the Commons the motion was about "setting an example to our children and grandchildren". She said the cross-party support for the motion showed the country was "tired of a Prime Minister who won't take responsibility for breaking his own rules".
Conservative MP Steve Baker told MPs he had been tempted to "forgive" the Prime Minister for breaking Covid lockdown rules but conceded that possibility for him is now "gone" and that the "gig's up".
Mr Baker said the problem he has with Boris Johnson, "having watched what I would say is contrition, beautiful, marvellous contrition", is that it "only lasted as long as it took to get out of the headmaster's study".
He said: "And that's not good enough for me, and it's not good enough for my voters. I'm sorry, it's not.
"And I'm afraid I am now in a position where I have to acknowledge that if the Prime Minister occupied any other office of senior responsibility, if he was a secretary of state, if he was a minister of state, a parliamentary undersecretary, a permanent secretary, a director general, if he was a chief executive of a private company or a board director, he would be long gone. The reason that he is not long gone is because removing a sitting prime minister is an extremely grave matter, and goodness knows, people will know, I've had something to do with that, too."
