Boris Johnson has attempted to draw Rishi Sunak deeper into the Partygate scandal by suggesting that if Covid rules had been broken in Downing Street, then it should have been “obvious” to the current prime minister, too.
As he began his lengthy evidence session in front of the privileges committee, which is investigating whether he deliberately misled MPs over lockdown gatherings, Johnson rejected suggestions he should have been aware.
“If it was obvious to me these events were contrary to the guidance and the rules, it must have been equally obvious to dozens of others, including the most senior officials in the government, most of them like me responsible for drawing up the rules,” he told MPs.
“And it must have been obvious to others in the building, including the current prime minister.”
Sunak, who was chancellor at the time, regularly attended No 10 for meetings throughout the pandemic. He was fined by the Metropolitan police over his attendance at Johnson’s birthday party in the cabinet room at No 10 on 19 June 2021, for which his predecessor also received a fixed-penalty notice.
Downing Street said the prime minister would not be watching the testimony.
Johnson told MPs it was “staggeringly implausible” to suggest he would have allowed the gatherings to have been pictured by the official No 10 photographer, and there was a “near-universal belief” in the building that rules and guidance were being complied with.
However, later in the hearing, he suggested he had in fact been aware that guidance to mitigate the spread of Covid in No 10 was not properly enforced. “I wouldn’t wish to say it was perfectly implemented,” he said. “This was guidance and I’m not going to pretend that it was enforced rigidly.”
In a bullish opening statement, Johnson said “hand on heart” that he did not lie to the House of Commons over Partygate, adding: “When those statements were made, they were made in good faith and on the basis on what I honestly knew and believed at the time.”
Johnson faces a battle for his political future as he tries to convince the cross-party committee of MPs he misled the House of Commons only unintentionally over lockdown events in Downing Street.
He argued that evidence gathered from No 10 officials “conclusively” showed that he did not deliberately mislead parliament, as he was reassured “repeatedly” by No 10 aides that no rules were broken.
He claimed he had been told “a couple of times” by the senior civil servant Sue Gray, who conducted the inquiry into the Partygate affair, that she did not believe his behaviour had met the criminal threshold.
Johnson said the process being used to decide whether he was in contempt of parliament was “manifestly unfair”. He also claimed that Harriet Harman, the committee chair, had “plainly and wrongly prejudged” the inquiry on social media. However, he was willing to accept her assurances.
An evidently frustrated Johnson said he felt a No 10 leaving do that he attended on 13 November 2020 was “essential for work purposes” – even though pictures of the occasion showed no work was taking place and the police later issued fines.
“I know that people around the country will look at those events and think that they look like the very kind of events that we, or I, were forbidding to everyone else,” he said. “But I will believe until the day I die that it was my job to thank staff for what they had done, especially during a crisis like Covid, which kept coming back, which seemed to have no end and where people’s morale did, I’m afraid, begin to sink.”
In an increasingly tetchy session, he added: “People who say we were partying during lockdown simply do not know what they were talking about.”
Johnson repeatedly claimed the gatherings in No 10 – including leaving drinks, a garden party and the event marking his birthday in the cabinet room – were “necessary for work purposes”.
He admitted he would have told businesses from the Downing Street podium that it was up to them whether they held non-socially distanced leaving drinks during the pandemic.
Yet, in an early indication of whether his defence was likely to convince the committee, he was told by the committee member Bernard Jenkin: “I don’t think we agree with your interpretation of guidance”.
Johnson said the leaving speech for his outgoing communications chief Lee Cain on 13 November 2020 was “necessary to show that there was no rancour, that the business of government was being carried on” despite his departure. However, he understood that a photograph appeared to show a “social event”, adding: “It was not a social event. What I was doing was thanking staff for their contribution.”
Of a leaving do on 14 January 2021 for which police fines were issued, he again said the event was essential. “Those two officials were leaving and it was my job to thank them and to show that their work was appreciated,” he said. Asked whether alcohol was necessary to do that, he suggested it was the usual custom.
On his 19 June 2020 birthday party in the cabinet room, Johnson admitted his wife, Carrie Johnson, and their interior designer Lulu Lytle were present, even though neither of them needed to be there for work purposes.
“They certainly included my wife and son and yes, there was a contractor who was working in the building,” he said. However, he said he had not realised it breached the guidance and that later, in the Commons, it “entirely slipped my mind”.
Johnson said it was “inconceivable” that Cain and his former top aide Dominic Cummings would not have raised concerns at the time with his senior official Martin Reynolds if they thought the No 10 garden party on 20 May 2020 was against the rules.
He said he could not remember Reynolds raising concerns with him, but that he did not share Cain’s view that the event, which featured trestle tables laden with drinks in the garden and was attended by his wife and her friends from other government departments, was “clearly a social event”, and that it was his “firm impression” it was within the rules.
