Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

Johnson denies he was warned No 10 event in May 2020 was against rules and says he did not lie to parliament – as it happened

Boris Johnson Dominic Cummings No 10 Sue Gray Dominic Raab Lords Peers Beth Rigby Covid-19 Martin Reynolds

Early evening summary

  • Sue Gray, the civil servant investigating the partygate scandal, has said she will interview Dominic Cummings, the former No 10 aide who says he is willing to give evidence on oath that Johnson has lied about the Downing Streeet drinks party on 20 May 2020. (See 5.42pm.)
  • Christian Wakeford has become the seventh Tory MP to publicly call for a no confidence vote in Johnson. (See 5.40pm.) MPs have been meeting to discuss their next steps, and there is increasing speculation that 54 letters demanding a confidence vote will soon be with the 1922 Committee chairman, Sir Graham Brady, meaning the threshold for a ballot would have been met.

That’s all from me for today. But our Covid coverage continues on our global live blog.

And this is from the Times’ Steven Swinford, reporting the response of a Boris Johnson supporter in cabinet to news that “red wall” Tories are plotting against him.

Updated

Sue Gray, the civil servant investigating partygate, will interview Dominic Cummings as part of her inquiry, the Mirror’s Pippa Crerar reports.

Updated

The Conservative MP Christian Wakeford says he has submitted a letter calling for a no confidence vote in Boris Johnson, Yahoo News’s Nadine Batchelor-Hunt reports. He is the seventh Tory MP to publicly say a contest is needed.

Updated

Tory MPs criticise plan for military to take charge of dealing with Channel crossings

Tory MPs have warned the Royal Navy will be operating a “taxi service” for people crossing the Channel in small boats under “Operation Dog’s Dinner”, PA Media reports. In a Commons urgent question earlier ministers came under fire from some on their backbenches for not seeking to push back small boats trying to reach England from France. PA says:

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is expected to take over command of the operation from Border Force by the end of the month in a move signed off by Boris Johnson.

Defence minister James Heappey said military involvement is part of a wider plan from the government, which will be announced in the coming weeks.

The current details are believed to have been announced as part of a government bid to offer “red meat” to Tory MPs in a bid to drive attention away from Downing Street party allegations.

But Conservative former minister Sir Edward Leigh warned: “In the absence of ministers having the political will to use pushback, what is the point in appointing a Royal Naval admiral to help Border Force to be a more efficient taxi service so that the migrants will know that now ‘we have got the Royal Navy going to pick us up and we will be taken safety to the UK, and we will be put in a hotel and we will never ever be sent home’? This is just an embarrassment.”

“Will the minister now coordinate with his colleagues to do what we have been suggesting for months now and that we get rid of the pull factors, namely we reform any piece of legislation that is necessary, including the Human Rights Act, and people who do this illegal crossing are arrested, put in a prison, and then deported?”

Heappey replied: “His exhortations and those of colleagues have been heard.”

Conservative MP Philip Hollobone added: “This isn’t Operation Red Meat, it’s Operation Dog’s Dinner. This is going to incentivise people traffickers, they’ll see the Royal Navy ship on the horizon and they’ll say ‘point your dinghy in that direction, you only need to get halfway’ and the Royal Navy will pick them up. The only way this will work if the Royal Navy intercepts asylum seekers and returns them back to France. Without the second bit, this simply won’t work.”

Heappey replied: “The last bit would be impossible without French permission and French permission has not been given. But I don’t accept his characterisation of what is being spoken about today. The MoD’s mission is to make sure nobody arrives in the UK on their own terms.”

Tobias Ellwood, Conservative chairman of the defence committee, warned: “There is a real danger of mission creep here, with further naval assets being sucked into this challenge.”

Updated

Gavin Barwell, chief of staff in Downing Street under Theresa May, and a regular critic of Boris Johnson’s, says his latest excuse for attending the party in the Downing Street garden is “absolutely hopeless”.

My colleague Jessica Elgot also reports that among Conservative MPs patience with Boris Johnson is running out.

Updated

And Sky News’s Mollie Malone says Tory MPs may be closer than people think to getting the 54 letters needed to trigger a confidence vote in the prime minister.

At the weekend there were reports that around 35 letter might already have been submitted to the 1922 Committee chairman, Sir Graham Brady, but the real figure is a closely-guarded secret, and so most estimates involve an element of guesswork.

Tory MPs from the 2019 intake have been meeting to discuss getting rid of Boris Johnson, my colleague Aubrey Allegretti reports.

Here is my colleague Jessica Elgot’s analysis of Dominic Cummings’ claims about Boris Johnson.

Ten more universities have voted to join industrial action on UK campuses, taking the total to 68 institutions expected to go on strike later this year. The University and College Union (UCU) said that after reballoting, universities including Newcastle, Queen Mary London, Strathclyde and Swansea all passed the 50% thresholds required to support strikes.

In early December 58 universities saw UCU members strike for three days over a variety of causes, after two ballots. One ballot was on pay and employment conditions, while the other was against proposals for the Universities Superannuation Scheme that UCU says would result in substantial pension cuts.

Jo Grady, UCU’s general secretary, said:

We truly hope that further disruption can be avoided - that is what staff and students alike all want. But this is entirely in the gift of employers who simply need to revoke their devastating pension cuts and take long-overdue action over deteriorating pay and working conditions.

Raj Jethwa, chief executive of the Universities and Colleges Employers Association, said there would be “widespread dismay” at the prospect of further strikes six months after agreement on a 1.5% pay increase.

Activists from anti-poverty ONE Campaign at Westminster today staging a protest calling for the sharing of coronavirus vaccines with developing countries.
Activists from anti-poverty ONE Campaign at Westminster today staging a protest calling for the sharing of coronavirus vaccines with developing countries. Photograph: Vickie Flores/EPA

And here is Dominic Cummings replying to the interview in which Boris Johnson responded to claims from Cummings that he lied to MPs about the Downing Street party.

Like many of Cummings’ tweets, it need translating. OODA is OODA loop, a US miliary concept highlighting the importance of the “observe, orient, decide, act” cycle. Fkd probably needs no explanation. For your OODA loop to be fkd is not good, at least, in Cummings’ book.

Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative chair of the Commons health committee who was runner-up in the 2019 Tory leadership contest, has told the House magazine that it would “take a lot” to persuade him to stand again. He said:

I wasn’t expecting to leave the government in 2019, but I’ve enjoyed being on the backbenches much more than I thought. I won’t say my ambition has completely vanished, but it would take a lot to persuade me to put my hat into the ring.

And this is how Dominic Cummings thinks Hunt’s words will be interpreted.

Updated

Javid says he is 'cautiously optimistic' Covid restrictions in England can be substantially reduced next week

Sajid Javid, the health secretary, told MPs in the Commons earlier that he was “cautiously optimistic” that the government could “substantially reduce” Covid restrictions in England next week.

Declaring that hospital cases seem to have reached their peak, he said:

The action that this government has taken in response to Omicron and the collective efforts of the British people have seen us become the most boosted country in Europe, the most tested country in Europe, and [have] the most antivirals per head in Europe. That is why we are the most open country in Europe.

I have always said that these restrictions should not stay in place a day longer than absolutely necessary.

Due to these pharmaceutical defences and the likelihood that we have already reached the peak of the case numbers of hospitalisations, I am cautiously optimistic that we will be able to substantially reduce restrictions next week.

Sajid Javid in the Commons.
Sajid Javid in the Commons. Photograph: Reuters

The Guardian and Observer charity appeal in support of communities affected by climate-induced extreme weather is closing in on £1m donations from readers.

The theme this year is climate justice, inspired by stories of people and communities uprooted by climate volatility, whether flooding, wildfire, melting ice or drought, from Madagascar to the Arctic Circle.

The appeal , which started in early December, had reached £940,000 by midnight on Sunday, when the appeal was originally scheduled to close, and then extended in a bid to try to hit the £1m mark.

My mid-afternoon on Tuesday donations had inched closer – reaching £980,000 as hundreds more readers gave generously, bringing the total number of donors to 9,300.

Donations will be shared between four charities: Practical Action, Global Greengrants Fund UK, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, and Environmental Justice Foundation.

Welcoming the news, Hélène Ralimanana, Head of the Kew Madagascar Conservation Centre, said:

We couldn’t be more grateful to everyone who is supporting this year’s appeal. The work we are doing here in Madagascar is critical to the ensuring sustainable livelihoods for the local communities as we face multiple threats to our island’s ecosystems.

There is still time to give online to the appeal.

YouGov says its latest polling suggests almost two-thirds of people think Boris Johnson should resign.

Updated

Here is the Boris Johnson inteview in full.

There’s some hope on the horizon for England’s 4 million households who live in social housing, many of whom struggle to get help with essential problems from squalid conditions to fire safety. Michael Gove’s Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities has announced plans to professionalise housing staff and is consulting on how they should be trained so they are “better equipped to support tenants, deal effectively with complaints, and make sure homes are good quality”.

Waiting in long call centre queues and not getting adequate help has long been a headache for social housing tenants. Six out of 10 complainants are not happy with the response, according to the latest English Housing Survey, and there has been a 139% increase in complaints to the housing ombudsman. This was a big issue at Grenfell Tower where complaining tenants were labelled “rebel residents” and the public inquiry has heard few of the senior housing officers had any training in housing.

“If you look after 500 properties and you don’t know what you’re doing you can inflict an awful lot of misery on a lot of people,” said Ed Daffarn, a committee member of Grenfell United, which has been campaigning for a better deal on social housing. He escaped the 16th floor at Grenfell after his complaints were ignored.

Eddie Hughes, minister for rough sleeping and housing, said:

Too many social housing residents have told me they feel like they are not listened to or treated with respect – raising complaints time and time again only for the problems not to be fixed. This needs to stop. This review announced today will drive up the standard of services received by residents, making sure their concerns are taken seriously and they have somewhere safe to live.

Updated

Six takeaways from what Labour call the PM's 'end of the road' interview

Boris Johnson has never sounded as contrite, humbled and close to beaten during his premiership as he did in the pooled TV interview with Sky’s Beth Rigby broadcast at lunchtime. His script has not changed much since last Wednesday, when he told MPs at PMQs that he thought the lockdown-busting party he attended at No 10 on 20 May 2020 was a work event. But he was pressed relentlessly, and a lot has changed in his situation over the last six days. Here are six takeaways from the inteview.

  • Johnson is now resting his claim not to have lied about the party on the narrow assertion that no one told him in advance it was “against the rules”. There is compelling evidence now that he was told in advance the event should not go ahead, but it is perhaps conceivable that these objections were framed in general terms, and without detailed reference to the Covid restrictions in force at the time. (Even people who lie easily and casually, like Johnson, tend to prefer being truthful if that is an option.) In response to Rigby’s opening question about whether he had lied, Johnson said:

Nobody told me that what we were doing was against the rules, that the event in question was something that was not a work event, and as I said in the House of Commons, when I went out into that garden I thought that I was attending a work event.

And later he said:

I am absolutely categorical [about this]; nobody said to me this is an event that is against the rules.

He made the same point, about being categorical on this, a second time. This is not a convincing excuse, because it is clear that the people who warned him not to go ahead with the party did so precisely because it would be against the rules. But they may not have phrased it like that. When asked by Rigby about claims that he told these people they were “overreacting”, Johnson did not deny that aspect of the case against him.

  • Johnson is also claiming that he was entitled to assume the event was legitimate - because otherwise it would not have been organised in the first place. He told Rigby:

I can tell you categorically that nobody told me, nobody said that this was something that was against the rules ... or that we were doing something that wasn’t a work event because, frankly, I can’t imagine why on earth it would have gone ahead, or why it would have been allowed to go ahead.

And at another point, when asked if he was calling Dominic Cummings a liar, he said:

I can’t believe that we would have gone ahead with an event that people were saying was against the rules.

This is a circular argument (‘it must have been allowed because it was allowed’) that implies Johnson is still not taking responsibility for what happened. He implies others are to blame.

  • Johnson declined several invitations to say that he thinks Cummings has been lying about him. That might be because he wants to avoid provoking Cummings even further. But more probably it is because he realises Cummings has witnesses and email evidence to back up his account of what happened.
  • Johnson does not sound confident that the Sue Gray inquiry will clear him. He confirmed he has given evidence to Gray. Asked if he had been lying, he said at one point:

My memory of this event, as I said, is going out into the garden for about 25 minutes for what I implicitly thought was a work event and talking to staff, thanking staff.

I can’t remember exactly how many but for about 25 minutes I was there. I then went back to my my office and continued my work ....

That is the very, very best of my recollection about this event. That’s what I’ve said to the inquiry. We’ll have to see what they what they say.

The political historian Steven Fielding thinks this is reminscent of Ronald Reagan - another boosterish politician with a factual reliability problem.

  • Johnson does not seem to be discounting the possibility that the Gray report will force him to resign. He did not confirm that he definitely would resign in those circumstances. And it would have been odd for him to rule it out, because that would prejudge the inquiry. But when pressed by Rigby on this, he sounded genuinely unsure of his future.
  • Johnson is now accepting more readily that he was personally at fault. In the Commons last week he said “there were things we simply did not get right”, implying others were at fault, and in private he told Tory MPs later he did not think he had done anything wrong. That is not his position today. He started by admitting he had personally got things wrong. He said:

I want to begin by repeating my apologies to everybody for the misjudgments that I’ve made, that we may have made in No 10 and beyond, whether in Downing Street or throughout the pandemic.

He also repeatedly said he was “deeply” or “heartily, heartily” sorry for the party. His apology sounded more genuine than last week’s (although that is not particularly hard).

Updated

Sturgeon says Scotland's Omicron restrictions to be lifted from next Monday

Restrictions brought in to combat the Omicron variant before Christmas will be lifted across Scotland from next Monday, with nightclubs reopening, social distancing rules in bars and restaurants shelved and large indoor events resuming.

But the public are being urged to remain “cautious” about socialising in larger groups, to continue to work from home and use face coverings, while vaccine passports remain in use for large-scale events.

In a statement to the Scottish parliament, Nicola Sturgeon said that the latest data “gives us confidence that we have turned the corner on the Omicron wave”.

Confirming a significant fall in the number of new positive cases, Sturgeon said that on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday of last week, 36,526 new positive cases were recorded through PCR and lateral flow tests, compared with 20,268 cases reported this Sunday, Monday and today.

With hospital admissions and admissions to intensive care falling, Sturgeon said that the data suggested Omicron peaked in the first week of January and that “we are now on the downward slope of this wave of cases”.

Yesterday the limit on numbers at outdoor public events was lifted.

The remaining statutory measures introduced in response to Omicron – limits on indoor public events; the requirement for one metre physical distancing between different groups in indoor public places; the requirement for table service in hospitality premises serving alcohol on the premises; and the closure of nightclubs – will be lifted from next Monday, 24 January.

From Monday, the guidance asking people to stick to a three-household limit on indoor gatherings will also be lifted.

Before the statement, opposition parties and business groups called on Sturgeon to ease restrictions more quickly. The Scottish Hospitality Group pointed to Scottish government research which suggested that the number of people visiting bars and restaurants has fallen while the number mixing in each other’s homes has risen.

Updated

Here is some comment from journalists and commentators on the Boris Johnson interview.

From Sky’s Kate McCann

From my colleague Peter Walker

From the Spectator’s Isabel Hardman

From TalkTV’s Piers Morgan

From the Sun’s Harry Cole

Labour says it's 'end of the road' for PM and that he didn't need anyone to tell him party was against rules

Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, has responded to the Sky interview by saying it is “the end of the road” for Boris Johnson.

She points out that, although Johnson may be saying no one told him specifically the party was against the rules (see 1.15pm), they should not have had to - because it should have been obvious. She says:

Boris Johnson clearly knows it’s the end of the road.

He’s the prime minister, he set the rules, he didn’t need anyone to tell him that the party he attended broke them.

If he had any respect for the British public, he would do the decent thing and resign.

Rayner has identified a crucial feature of Johnson’s denial; that it was tightly defined, which implies he is not contesting broader aspects of the case against him.

For example, Johnson may have been told that holding the party was unwise, without someone saying explicitly it was against Covid regulations. Dominic Cummings and the other official or officials who raised concerns may not have felt the need to spell this out - because they thought it was so obvious.

Angela Rayner.
Angela Rayner. Photograph: Tayfun Salcı/Zuma Press Wire/Rex/Shutterstock

Updated

Johnson denies lying to parliament about No 10 party

Here is the PA Media story on the Boris Johnson interview.

Boris Johnson has denied lying to parliament about a gathering in No 10’s garden during the first lockdown despite Dominic Cummings saying he would swear on oath that he warned the prime minister it would be a rule-breaking drinks party.

In a major interview, Johnson said he had told the Whitehall inquiry into the allegations that to the “best of my recollection” ahead of the 20 May 2020 event “nobody told me that what we were doing was against the rules”.

The prime minister said that he does “humbly apologise to people for misjudgments that were made” after facing calls to resign over the partygate affair, including from six Tory MPs.

He made his first public appearance after reducing his contacts from when No 10 said a family member tested positive for Covid-19 last week, as chancellor Rishi Sunak refused to give the prime minister his unequivocal backing. (See 12.53pm.)

Asked if he had lied to parliament over the parties during a visit to a north London hospital, Johnson said: “No. I want to begin by repeating my apologies to everybody for the misjudgments that I’ve made, that we may have made in No 10 and beyond, whether in Downing Street or throughout the pandemic.

“Nobody told me that what we were doing was against the rules, that the event in question was something that ... was not a work event, and as I said in the House of Commons when I went out into that garden I thought that I was attending a work event.”

Johnson said he “could not imagine why on earth it would have gone ahead, or why it would’ve been allowed to go ahead” if he had been told it was not a “work event”.

“I do humbly apologise to people for misjudgments that were made but that is the very, very best of my recollection about this event, that’s what I’ve said to the inquiry,” he said.

Updated

Here is a clip from Beth Rigby’s pooled interview with Boris Johnson.

Q: Will you still be PM at the end of the year?

Johnson says he understands why Rigby is asking the question, but he is focusing on delivering for the public.

And that’s it. Sky News has finished broadcasting the clip.

I will post a proper summary and analysis soon.

Updated

Q: Has cabinet agreed not to renew the plan B restrictions?

Johnson ducks the question, but stresses the importance of booster vaccines.

Q: Can you survive this? Your ratings are terrible.

Johnson says he understands people’s feelings. He repeats his apologies.

But he says there is “another story” that he wants to come on to. That is about how Britain has been able to recover more quickly from Covid than any other comparable country.

Q: But you must be worried about your future?

Johnson says his job is to remain focused on delivering for the British people.

Q: Was having to apologise to the Queen for No 10 staff holding parties the night before Prince Philip’s funeral a moment of shame for you?

Johnson says he deeply and bitterly regrets what happened.

Updated

Q: It is ludicrous to say you went out there, and saw the drinks, and did not realise it was a party.

Johnson repeats his apologies for the misjudgments that were made.

Q: Do you accept on principle a PM who has misled parliament should have to resign?

Johnson says it would be wrong to prejudge what the report will say.

Rigby asks again if Johnson will resign if the Gray report finds against him.

Johnson again says people should wait to see what is in the report.

Johnson won't rule out having to resign following publication of Sue Gray's report

Q: Will you resign if it is shown that you have misled parliament?

Johnson says they should wait to see what the Sue Gray report says.

Q: Dominic Lawson says you were warned about the party, and you said they were over-reacting?

Johnson says he is sorry for the judgments made.

He says, again, no one told him this was against the rules.

Johnson says no one told him No 10 party was against the rules - but ducks invitation to call Cummings liar

Beth Rigby, the Sky News political editor, is interviewing Boris Johnson.

Q: Have you lied about the No 10 party?

Johnson says he wants to start by repeating his apology.

No one told him this was against the rules, or not a work event, he says.

He says we should wait to see what Sue Gray says. He will return to the Commons as soon as that report is out to say more.

Q: So you are saying Dominic Cummings is lying?

Johnson says he is sorry mistakes were made.

Q: He is saying you are lying?

Johnson says he can say categorically nobody told him this was against the rules, or not a work event.

His memory of this was going out into the garden for about 25 minutes, for what he thought was a work event. He says he humbly apologises for the misjudgments made.

Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson Photograph: Sky News

Updated

Johnson insists he did think gathering in No 10 garden was 'work event'

Boris Johnson has restated his claim that he believed the gathering in No 10 garden on 20 May 2020 was a “work event”, PA Media reports.

I will post the full quotes shortly.

Boris Johnson visiting the Finchley Memorial hospital in north London this morning.
Boris Johnson visiting the Finchley Memorial hospital in north London this morning. Photograph: WPA/Getty Images

Updated

Sunak says he believes Johnson – but that ministers who lie to Commons should resign

Rishi Sunak, who as chancellor has appeared slightly more reluctant than other cabinet ministers to defend Boris Johnson over the Downing Street party, has recorded a TV interview. He called in the cameras to discuss the latest earnings figures, but briefly answered questions about partygate too.

Asked if he believed Johnson’s account, Sunak replied:

Of course I do. The prime minister set out his understanding of this matter last week in parliament. I refer you to his words. Sue Gray is conducting an inquiry into this matter and I fully support the prime minister’s requests for patience while that concludes.

Asked if Johnson should resign if he had lied to parliament, Sunak said: “I am not going to get into hypotheticals, the ministerial code is clear on these matters.”

This is more or less exactly what Downing Street said when asked this question (see 12.34pm) – and Dominic Raab, for that matter (see 9.31am).

But TV interviews can often convey more than you might glean from the transcript and, although Sunak was just repeating “the line”, viewers might conclude that he was not doing so with great enthusiasm. He also wrapped up the interview quickly, allowing him to ignore a question about whether he supported the PM unequivocally.

Updated

No 10 says PM did not lie to MPs - but that he accepts lying to parliament would be resignation matter

At the Downing Street lobby briefing the prime minister’s spokesman rejected Dominic Cummings’ latest claim that Boris Johnson has lied to parliament about what he knew about the No 10 party on 20 May 2020. The spokesman said:

You have seen us say repeatedly that it is untrue that the prime minister was warned about the event [on May 20, 2020] in advance and you have got the prime minister’s statement to the house.

Asked if Johnson had ever lied to the Commons, the spokesman replied: “No.”

The spokesman also said Johnson supported the guidance in the ministerial code saying ministers who lie to the Commons should resign. Asked if Johnson would resign himself if he misled parliament, the spokesman said:

The guidance is clear, the ministerial code is very clear on this point when it comes to knowingly misleading the house and the prime minister abides by that, and we fully support it.

The spokesman also said it was important not to “jump ahead” and conflate what was in the ministerial code with “what the investigation may or may not conclude or set out”.

I will post more from the briefing later.

In a blogpost for the Spectator, Robert Peston, ITV’s political editor, says Sue Gray, the senior civil servant investigating the partygate scandal, knows the identity of the second senior No 10 official who told Martin Reynolds, the PM’s principal private secretary, that the party on 20 May 2020 should not got ahead, and that she wants to speak to him.

In his Substack blog yesterday, Dominic Cummings said he and another “very senior official” told Reynolds on 20 May that holding the party was a mistake, because it was against the rules, and that it should be cancelled. Cummings said these concerns were also raised directly with Boris Johnson. (See 9.31am.) No 10 denies this, and is sticking to its claim that Johnson was not alerted to concerns about the appropriateness of the event before it started.

Peston, who like Cummings has not named the second official, says:

[Gray] has also told the sender of the dynamite email she would like to speak with him but has not yet. When she does, he will both point her to the email and he will tell her that Reynolds immediately came to his office after receipt of the email and asked him why the party should be cancelled.

Reynolds was told by the email sender – ‘in the nicest possible way’ – that the party was a kind sentiment but it should be cancelled because it broke the rules. Reynolds allegedly said he feared it could be more embarrassing to cancel.

Updated

I have included a new paragraph to the post at 11.29am, listing all 14 government defeats in the Lords on the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill last night, explaining which of those defeats cannot be overturned in the Commons.

If the government does want to bring back those measures, it would have to put them in a new bill.

To see the update, you may need to refresh the page.

Government wins appeal over whether contract to firm linked to Cummings was lawful

The government has won its court of appeal bid to overturn a ruling that a contract given to a company whose founders were friends of former adviser Dominic Cummings was unlawful, PA Media reports. PA says:

Last year, the high court ruled that the Cabinet Office’s decision to award a contract to market research firm Public First was unlawful as it gave rise to “apparent bias”.

The organisation was given a contract for over £550,000 in June 2020 for focus groups and other research - including testing public health slogans such as “Stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives”.

Campaigning organisation the Good Law Project brought a case over the links between the firm’s founders and the prime minister’s former adviser as well as then-Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove.

In the original ruling, Mrs Justice O’Farrell found that the “apparent bias” was not due to the existing relationships between Cummings and Public First but because of a failure to consider any other research agency and record the objective criteria used in the selection.

However, in a judgment this morning, the court of appeal overturned the previous ruling.

The Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett, sitting with Lord Justice Coulson and Lady Justice Carr, found that the original judgment was an “unprecedented outcome”.

Lord Burnett concluded: “The fair-minded and reasonably informed observer would not have concluded that a failure to carry out a comparative exercise of the type identified by the judge created a real possibility that the decision-maker was biased.”

Cummings has described this as “total vindication” for the procurement decision he took in a Twitter thread starting here.

Raab signals government will seek to reverse Lords defeats on plans to curb noisy protests

In his Today programme interview this morning Dominic Raab, the justice secretary and deputy prime minister, was asked if the government would try to reverse the government defeats on the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill last night when it returns to the Lords (or at least those capable of being reversed - some clauses cannot be brought back, because they were only added after the bill arrived in the Lords). Raab said the government would have to think carefully about what it would do next, but he signalled that it would bring back the measures relating to noisy protests. (See 11.29am.) He told the programme:

In relation to noise, of course we support the right to peaceful and rambunctious protest, but it cannot be allowed to interfere with the lives of the law-abiding majority.

Full list of 14 government defeats in Lords on police, crime, sentencing and courts bill - and what they mean

Here is a summary of the votes the government lost last night on the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill in the House of Lords. I have taken the detail from PA Media.

1) Peers voted for an urgent review of spiking offences.

2) Peers voted to impose a duty of candour on members of the police workforce.

3) Peers voted to make misogyny a hate crime.

4 and 5) Peers removed measures in the bill giving the police the power to impose conditions on protest marches judged to be too noisy. There was also a second vote on the same issue.

6) Peers voted to include an amendment in the bill guaranteeing there would be no “unintended ban on protests in Parliament Square”.

7) Peers rejected measures to create a new offence of “locking on”, a tactic used by protesters to make it difficult to remove them, carrying with it a penalty of up to a year in prison.

8) Peers voted to ensure that tougher penalties in the bill for blocking a highway would only apply to people blocking major routes and motorways, not all roads.

9) Peers rejected measures to a create a new offence of obstructing the construction or maintenance of major transport works.

10) Peers rejected measures to create an offence of interfering with the use or operation of key national infrastructure, including airports, the road network, railways and newspaper printers.

11) Peers rejected measures to allow the police to stop and search a person or vehicle if they suspected an offence was planned, such as causing serious disruption or obstructing major transport works.

12) Peers rejected measures to allow police to stop and search anyone at a protest “without suspicion”.

13) Peers reject measures that would allow individuals with a history of causing serious disruption to be banned by the courts from attending certain protests.

14) Peers voted to repeal the 19th century law which criminalises rough sleeping.

Of these votes, 7), 9), 10), 11), 12) and 13) relate to clauses that were introduced to the bill when it was in the Lords, which means they cannot be overturned in the Commons.

Updated

Lords inflict multiple defeats on ministers with misogyny voted a hate crime

Last night the government suffered 14 defeats in the House of Lords on the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill. My colleague Jedidajah Otte has the story here.

Here are some tweets from peers about the votes, which represent a significant setback for the Home Office, particularly because some of the clauses in the bill relating to protest were only introduced when the legislation was in the Lords, and cannot now be reinserted when it returns to the Commons.

From Dick Newby, the Lib Dem leader in the Lords

From Andrew Adonis, the Labour peer

From Jenny Jones, the Green party peer

From Paul Strasburger, a Lib Dem peer

Protestors demonstrating against the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill outside the Houses of Parliament last night.
Protestors demonstrating against the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill outside the Houses of Parliament last night.

 Photograph: Hesther Ng/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock

There will be three urgent questions in the Commons starting at 12.30pm: on the role of the military dealing with Channel crossings; on fraud in coronavirus grant schemes; and on Derby County Football Club.

We are likely to hear from Boris Johnson today, the Mail’s Jason Groves reports. Johnson has been avoiding doing media in recent days, partly, we were told last week, because he was limiting contact with others after a family member tested positive.

William Hague, the former Conservative leader, told Times Radio this morning that he is “appalled” at Boris Johnson’s failure to tackle the drinking and partying culture in No 10. He said:

I am appalled because I can’t imagine allowing I can’t imagine that being allowed in any government that I have served in, which is quite a few governments.

You can understand officials working together under great stress ... sometimes having a drink and sometimes relaxing together and you can understand that. However, this the scale and regularity of what we’ve read about - it’s not something I can picture happening under David Cameron or John Major or Margaret Thatcher without them saying, ‘What the hell do you think you’re all doing? Get back to your desks and put away that drink.’

In his column in the Times (paywall) today Hague says, if Johnson is forced to resign, he will be “an outlier in British political history” because other prime ministers made to quit by their own MPs have left over policy issues, not because of their conduct.

Hague says Johnson that should try to ensure the Sue Gray report is published this week, so the crisis is resolved quickly, and that Johnson should announce measures to show he is taking standards more seriously, such as allowing Lord Geidt, his standards adviser, to initiate his own investigations and accepting all the recommendations in the recent report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life.

BBC chief warns licence fee freeze will leave £285m funding gap

The BBC will be forced to axe some of its programming after being left with a £285m gap in funding from the two-year licence fee freeze, Tim Davie, its director general, has warned. My collaegue Jamie Grierson has the story here.

Mark Spencer, the chief whip, arriving at No 10 ahead of cabinet this morning.
Mark Spencer, the chief whip, arriving at No 10 ahead of cabinet this morning. Photograph: Hannah McKay/Reuters

Downing Street refuses to concede that the event for staff held in the garden on 20 May 2020 was a “party”, even though attendees were asked to BYOB (bring your own bottle/booze). Boris Johnson claimed last week that “it could be said technically to fall within the guidance”, which seemed to mean ‘We’re still calling it a work event, even though in truth we know that’s not really what it was’. But, as the Mirror reports, in his Sky News interview this morning Dominic Raab, the justice secretary and deputy PM, momentarily went off message and said it was a “party”, before quickly correcting himself.

Updated

UK workers’ pay rises fall behind inflation amid cost-of-living crisis

Pay for workers in Britain has fallen in real terms for the first time in more than a year, despite signs that employers shrugged off concerns over the Omicron coronavirus variant to continue hiring in December, my colleague Richard Partington reports.

This is awkward for Boris Johnson, who last autum was arguing that “wage growth” would be what proved that his levelling up strategy was working.

Dominic Raab says Cummings’ claim Johnson lied to parliament is ‘nonsense’

Good morning. Boris Johnson’s critics believe that, if they can prove he lied to the House of Commons, then finally they will have the evidence to force him out (because the ministerial code says “ministers who knowingly mislead parliament will be expected to offer their resignation to the prime minister”) and Dominic Cummings is trying again to lever the PM out on these grounds.

Cummings has tried before, and last year he told MPs in evidence to a committee that he had heard Johnson say he would rather see the “bodies pile high” than order a third lockdown – a claim Johnson had categorically denied from the dispatch box. But last year the parliamentary authorities, and even the committee taking evidence from Cummings, showed no interest in following up Cummings’ evidence on this point, and adjudicating on who was telling the truth, and the allegation was left hanging in mid air.

Yesterday Cummings returned with new evidence of Johnson lying which, because partygate has become such a toxic controversy, will be much harder to ignore.

In his statement to MPs last week Johnson said that when he attended the party in the No 10 garden on 20 May 2020, when lockdown restrictions were in force, he “believed implicitly that this was a work event”. No 10 has also said that Johnson was not “warned” in advance that it would be a mistake for the party to go ahead.

There have also been claims from the government that he did not know it was happening in advance. No 10 says he did not see the email from his principal private secretary, Martin Reynolds, inviting staff to the party (although it would not be unusual for a PM not to read an email about a diary matter – his staff are there to read them for him). And on the Today programme this morning Dominic Raab, the justice secretary and deputy PM, was asked to confirm that Johnson has denied knowing “in advance about it [the party]”. That was correct, Raab said.

Cummings’ evidence, if true, blows the Johnson account to pieces. In a new post on his Substack blog, he says that he personally told Johnson on the day of the party that holding it was a mistake. Johnson “waved [the concerns] aside”, Cummings says. He also says that he and another “very senior official” told Reynolds on the day that holding the party would be against the rules. Cummings says Reynolds disagreed, but said he would discuss it with the PM. Cummings says he is “sure” Reynolds did check with the PM.

Raab has been giving interviews this morning. He told Times Radio that Cummings’ claims were “nonsense”. He said:

The suggestion that [Johnson] lied is nonsense. He’s made it very clear to the House of Commons ... that he thought it was a work event.

But Raab also refused to discuss the details of Cummings claims, and he said these were matters for the investigation by Sue Gray, the civil servant investigating all the partygate claims.

Raab also admitted that, in normal circumstances, lying to parliament would be a resignation matter. After stressing that he did not want to “get into hypotheticals”, he told the Today programme:

If it’s lying, deliberate in the way you describe, if it’s not corrected immediately, it would normally, under the ministerial code and the governance around parliament, be a resigning matter.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Boris Johnson chairs cabinet.

10am: Richard Meddings, the government’s proposed candidate for chair of NHS England, gives evidence to the Commons health committee.

11.15am: Greg Hands, the energy minister, and Christopher Pincher, the housing minister, give evidence to the Commons business committee about energy policy.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

11.30am: Sajid Javid, the health secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

11.30am: Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, gives evidence to the Commons Scottish affairs committee about Storm Arwen.

12pm: Vaughan Gething, the Welsh government’s economy minister, holds a Covid briefing.

12.15pm: Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, holds a press conference on Covid.

1.30pm: Mark Drakeford, the Welsh first minister, takes questions in the Senedd.

2pm: Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, makes a statement on Covid in the Scottish parliament.

There will be some UK Covid coverage here, but for more coronavirus coverage, do read our global live blog. It’s here.

I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com

Updated

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Middle children are more cooperative than their siblings, study suggests
After decades of debate, one of the largest ever studies on birth order suggests it does actually make a difference
The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Work or play? The rise of online ‘kidfluencers’ is raising complex legal and ethical questions
Videos of children opening boxes of toys and playing with them have become a feature of online marketing – making stars out of children as young as two.
The Conversation
The Conversation
She's here for 'a kitchen pep talk' during the holiday whirlwind
If you’re feeling too overwhelmed to cook during the holidays, maybe a new book by Margaret Eby can help
The Independent UK
The Independent UK
All the celebrities that have supported Blake Lively after Justin Baldoni lawsuit
Lively has received a huge amount of support after filing the lawsuit against Baldoni
The Independent UK
The Independent UK
Where’s Santa? Here’s how to track his journey this Christmas Eve
NORAD’s Santa Tracker website launched this year on December 1
The Independent UK
The Independent UK
Gen Z’s politics are hard to categorize – and a harbinger of a new political order
The great clashes to come will be less between left and right than between those inside and outside a dying establishment
The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.
Download on the AppStore Get it on Google Play