MPs have launched a bid to force Boris Johnson to release Sue Gray’s entire Partygate report - including all 300 photos she saw as evidence.
The Lib Dems have tabled an Early Day Motion to release “all accompanying evidence” on gatherings in Downing Street and Whitehall, “including photographs”.
Top civil servant Sue Gray gathered around 300 images and passed them to police, who are investigating 12 Westminster parties during lockdown.
However, sources have said she is not set to publish the images, which it’s thought could include CCTV stills, when she produces a second report.
And this week it emerged the Cabinet Office Liaison Unit has asked the Met Police to confirm it will not publish photos either, as part of its investigation.
The Lib Dem motion would use the mechanism of a “humble address” to order a “full, unreacted report of the Cabinet Office” investigation to be published.
The government would also have to give “a full list of the names of any elected officials, senior civil servants, and political appointees” who are fined by police.
This comes after the police and government suggested anyone who is fined will not be named, with Brits having to rely on Boris Johnson naming himself.
But it is only an Early Day Motion designed to voice opinions on issues of the day, without a House of Commons debate.
Tory ministers are under no obligation to give it any debating time, let alone a formal vote, on the floor of Parliament.
And it’s understood Labour is not ordering its MPs to sign the motion.
Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey urged MPs to back the motion regardless.
He said: “Boris Johnson can’t be trusted to admit whether he or any other Conservative ministers end up being fined by the police.
“We’ve seen time and again that his instinct is to lie, blame others or cover up the truth.”
No10 staff feared publishing the damning pictures could harm their reputations, according to the Times.
The Mirror has learned one photo shows Boris Johnson holding a bottle of beer at his own birthday party and was taken by his official photographer.
Boris Johnson has until tomorrow night to return his Met Police Partygate questionnaire.
The Prime Minister was issued with the quiz last Friday - and given seven days to send back the completed form.
He has been consulting lawyers over his responses - and is expected to resist any attempts to oust him if he is slapped with a fine.
London mayor Sadiq Khan said it would be "inappropriate" for him to lean on police and ask them to release photos of the Downing Street parties.
He told LBC: "Just think how inappropriate it would be for me, a Labour Mayor, getting involved in operational matters where a Conservative politician is being investigated.
"There are some countries around the world where the police do have their arms twisted in relation to operational issues.
"I think it is right in our system where I have got no influence in relation to whether the police do investigate Boris Johnson, what is published and so forth.
"I have always, as the Mayor, been cognisant of the importance of me understanding which side of the line I should be on."
Mr Johnson has already admitted attending some of the 12 gatherings under investigation - including 10 minutes at a birthday party in his honour, where a photo showed him holding a beer.
But according to ITV political editor Robert Peston, the PM’s lawyers now believe the relevant test is whether he returned to “proper work” after the gatherings.
Well-connected Mr Peston wrote: “If he can prove that he didn't get drunk and incapacitated, and has proof that he resumed more conventional prime ministerial activities after the seeming parties, his legal advisors seem to think there is a chance he can prove said events were simply part of his working day.
“And if he got sozzled and went for a kip, he'd be fined.”
Adam Wagner, a human rights barrister who analyses Covid lockdown laws, said the argument about whether the PM went back to work afterwards is “irrelevant”.
He told the Mirror: “It doesn’t matter what he did before or afterwards - the question is did he participate, and if he spent 10 minutes at a birthday gathering and there is a photo of him carrying a bottle of beer then he participated.
“If someone was working in a building in central London and in the next room there was a rave, and they just popped into the rave for 10 minutes, it would be absurd to say they had a reasonable excuse.
“There is no technical defence of ‘I went back to work’ - there is no technical defence of ‘I didn’t get drunk’.
“’I held the beer, I didn’t get drunk’ is like Bill Clinton’s ‘I smoked marijuana but I didn’t inhale’ - it’s nonsense. I don’t understand that to be a defence which could work in the regulations.”
