Closing summary
Here is a round-up of the main events from a busy evening in Westminster:
The House of Commons has voted to accept the privileges committee report on the conduct of former prime minister Boris Johnson during Partygate. It was a resounding result, with 354 MPs voting to approve, while just seven voted against.
Johnson’s allies boycotted a vote on the privileges committee’s report, in a move that was widely seen as a tactic to avoid showing how weak support for him in the Conservative parliamentary party has become. An overwhelming majority backed the privileges committee’s conclusion that Johnson committed five contempts of parliament, including misleading both the Commons and the cross-party group investigating him.
Boris Johnson faces being blocked from getting a pass allowing him unlimited access to the House of Commons, after MPs backed the punishment for his five contempts of parliament. The former prime minister was censured in his absence, given that he formally quit as an MP last week, for misleading parliament over Partygate and his conduct towards the privileges committee.
Chris Bryant, the Labour chair of the Commons standards committee (and chair of the privileges committee until he stood aside for this inquiry, because of his previous comments about Boris Johnson), said people made sacrifices during the pandemic because they felt we were all in this together. That is why they feel so strongly about this, he said. He defended the committee’s conclusion that Johnson would have deserved a 90-day suspension if he were still an MP.
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, who was recently knighted in Boris Johnson’s controversial resignation honours list, said the fixed-penalty notice Boris Johnson received for attending the birthday gathering was not a “conviction” or “admission of guilt”. The report “decides to impute a stain on his character”, Rees-Mogg continued. He added that the report “decides as if it were an Elon Musk particle to insert itself in the brain of Mr Johnson to work out what he must have thought in a particular moment”.
Labour’s Karl Turner commended the privileges committee for compiling the report. He said that anybody who reads the report “would have to conclude the reality that Boris Johnson was a liar”. Turner said: “Very often you would be surprised that he could get away with the things he was saying but it’s proven now that he was dishonest.”
Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan police commissioner, has given a strong hint that the Met will take action against Tories involved in the lockdown party organised by Shaun Bailey’s mayoral campaign team. In an interview with the News Agents podcast, asked about the video of the event leaked to the Mirror at the weekend, Rowley said: “We’re not routinely opening every minor historic allegation. So, if you phoned up about your neighbour from three years ago, we’re not going to reopen that. But clearly cases that are particularly serious, particularly concerning, we will do.”
Suella Braverman has called on police to increase the use of stop and search powers “to prevent violence and save more lives”. In a statement aimed at all 43 forces in England and Wales, the home secretary said officers who used the powers had her “full support”. Her comments are likely to alarm critics of stop and search who point out that the technique disproportionately targets black and minority ethnic communities.
David Cameron has admitted failures in his government’s preparations for a pandemic but defended the austerity drive that he and his chancellor, George Osborne, imposed, saying “your health system is only as strong as your economy”. The former prime minister repeatedly told the Covid inquiry it was a mistake that “more time and more questions” were not focused on tackling what turned out to be a “highly infectious, asymptomatic” pandemic.
Liz Truss has described the newspaper stunt in which her tenure as prime minister was measured against the shelf life of a lettuce as “puerile”. Speaking at a broadcasting conference in Dublin, Truss also complained that the media did not properly understand her economic ideas. She said too much political coverage was “froth”, while at the same time praising the overall irreverence of the UK.
Downing Street has defended Rishi Sunak after a video emerged of the prime minister seemingly making a joke that mocked transgender people, saying the comments were simply aimed at a political opponent. The footage of Sunak addressing fellow Conservative MPs, leaked to PinkNews, shows him making fun of Ed Davey after the Liberal Democrat leader said it was possible for a woman to have a penis, which can happen under the government’s own gender recognition laws.
Clean energy companies would be offered up to £500m a year to set up manufacturing in the UK, to build the wind turbines, solar panels and other infrastructure needed to reach net zero, under plans set out by Labour. But Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, on Monday also gave assurances to the oil and gas industry that production would continue in the North Sea “for decades to come”, to the consternation of green campaigners. Under plans for a “British jobs bonus”, Labour would allocate £500m a year for each of the first five years of government, to provide capital grants to companies in low-carbon industries, including wind and solar energy, hydrogen and carbon capture and storage.
That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, and indeed the UK politics live blog for tonight. Thanks for following along.
Updated
The division list showed 118 Conservative MPs voted in favour of the report, while 225 MPs abstained.
The Conservative MPs who opposed the privileges committee report were: Sir Bill Cash; Nick Fletcher; Adam Holloway; Karl McCartney; Joy Morrissey; and Heather Wheeler.
The division list released immediately after the vote contained six names in the noes rather than seven announced in the chamber. There have been ongoing issues with names being recorded on the division lists, with other votes seeing the Commons authorities issuing updates later on. The ayes list released immediately after the vote contained 352 names rather than the 354 announced in the chamber, but again this could be updated later by the Commons authorities.
Updated
