Afternoon summary
- Downing Street has said this afternoon that, if Boris Johnson is fined by the police over illegal parties at No 10, the public will be told. At a lobby briefing this morning the PM’s spokesman refused to give that assurance, prompting protests from the opposition. (See 4.27pm.)
- Johnson is about to hold a press conference in Kyiv with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president. There will be live coverage here.
Updated
The Boris Johnson press conference in Ukraine will be starting soon. My colleague Oliver Holmes is covering it on our Ukraine live blog.
People will be told if police fine PM, says No 10 - after suggestion they wouldn't prompted outrage
Getting concessions out of the Downing Street press office is akin to squeezing blood out of a stone. Yesterday No 10, and Boris Johnson himself, spent most of the day, refusing to commit to the full Sue Gray report once the police investigation is over, before backing down shortly before Johnson had a private meeting with his MPs (some of whom were furious that he would not make this promise).
This morning No 10 refused to commit to disclosing the names of anyone in Downing Street who might be fined by the police over parties, including Johnson himself. (See 1.48pm.)
This line also sounded unsustainable – not least because, even though the Met says it would not disclose the names itself [see 2.21pm], it is notorious for leaking information like this to the media. And this afternoon No 10 shifted its position. At the afternoon lobby briefing, talking about this issue, the prime minister’s spokesperson said:
Obviously we are aware of the significant public interest with regard to the prime minister and we would always look to provide what updates we can on him, specifically.
Asked if that meant No 10 would say if Johnson was given a fine, the spokesman said: “Hypothetically, yes.”
Earlier Labour said it would be unthinkable for the public not to be told about the PM being fined in these circumstances. (See 3.30pm.)
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Peter Aldous becomes latest Tory MP to call for Johnson to resign
Peter Aldous, who represents Waveney in Suffolk, has become the latest Tory MP to declare that he has written a letter to the chairman of the 1922 Committee calling for a vote of no confidence in Boris Johnson. He says Johnson resigning would be best for the country, the government and the party.
After a great deal of soul-searching, I have reached the conclusion that the Prime Minister should resign. (1/3)
— Peter Aldous (@peter_aldous) February 1, 2022
It is clear that he has no intention of doing so and I have therefore written to the Chairman of the 1922 Committee of Backbench Conservative MPs, advising him that I have no confidence in the Prime Minister as Leader of the Conservative Party. (2/3)
— Peter Aldous (@peter_aldous) February 1, 2022
I have never taken such action before and had hoped that I would not be put in such an invidious position. Whilst I am conscious that others will disagree with me, I believe that this is in the best interests of the country, the Government and the Conservative Party. (3/3)
— Peter Aldous (@peter_aldous) February 1, 2022
Victims of Jimmy Savile, the TV personality and persistent paedophile and sexual predator, have been “disgusted” by Boris Johnson’s false claim that Keir Starmer was to blame for him not being prosecuted (see 9.28am), according to Richard Scorer, a prominent child abuse lawyer who represents many of Savile’s victims.
Victims of Savile I represented and have spoken with today are all disgusted by Boris Johnson’s comments. They’ve told me they want him to withdraw them and apologise. I urge Johnson to do that right away. Weaponising their suffering to get out of a political hole is disgraceful
— Richard Scorer (@Richard_Scorer) February 1, 2022
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The Welsh government has announced that it is doubling the value of its winter fuel support payments, which are available to low-income households. The one-off payments are going up from £100 to £200.
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DHSC writes off almost £9bn spent on PPE, accounts reveal
Some £8.7bn spent by the government on personal protective equipment (PPE) during the pandemic has been written off, PA Media reports. PA says:
New documents from the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) show huge amounts wasted on useless equipment, while millions of pounds has been spent getting out of contracts or storing PPE at ports.
According to the 2020/21 accounts, some £673m worth of equipment was found to be totally unusable, and £750m was spent on items that were not used before their expiry date.
Nearly £2.6bn was spent on “items not suitable for use in the NHS”, but which the department thinks can be sold or given to charities.
The DHSC also said the value of its remaining stock had been slashed by £4.7bn as the price of PPE dropped.
At the start of the pandemic, prices for protective equipment rose sharply as countries clamoured to get hold of items such as face masks.
The accounts further reveal that the DHSC expects that equipment that was scheduled to be delivered after the end of the financial year will lose £1.2bn in value.
The government was also charged £111.5m for not moving containers full of PPE from a port to their storage facility on time.
ITV’s Robert Peston has been tweeting about this story in a thread starting here.
Buried on page 199 of the Department of Health and Social Care’s annual report published yesterday is the shocking disclosure that it has incurred £8.7bn of losses - £8.7bn ! - on £12.1bn of PPE bought in 2020/21. Think about how that money could have been…
— Robert Peston (@Peston) February 1, 2022
And here is the extract Peston from the annual accounts (pdf) is quoting.
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This is Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, responding to No 10 refusing to confirm that it will tell the public if Boris Johnson gets fined for breaking Covid rules.
I can't believe this needs saying.
— Angela Rayner (@AngelaRayner) February 1, 2022
The public have a right to know if the Prime Minister is found to have committed an offence by the police.
Number 10 said they would publish the full report. They cannot be allowed to backtrack or hide the results of the police investigation. https://t.co/s7POt2y5jR
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Tom Hunt, who was elected Conservative MP for Ipswich at the 2019 election, has issued a statement saying the findings in the Sue Gray report published yesterday (or “update” - Gray did not call it a report, because so much material was held back) were not “acceptable, excusable, or defensible”. He said:
I’m not a sycophant. If some of my colleagues want to behave like this then that’s up to them, but it’s not me, nor will it ever be me.
When the leader of our party makes a big mistake, I think it’s important to call this out and not morph into some kind of Corbynista groupie that ignores the reality of what’s happened. No one is beyond question or reproach.
Hunt also said some of the media interventions by Boris Johnson’s supporters had been “so cack-handed that the best way they could be of assistance to the prime minister would be to disable all their social media platforms and cease carrying out media interviews”.
Hunt said that Johnson had his support for now and that it was not the time to “depose the prime minister”, but that a line could not be drawn under the saga until the full report was published.
Lynton Crosby says he's not taking job working for Johnson
Boris Johnson told Conservative MPs last night that Sir Lynton Crosby, the strategist credited with masterminding David Cameron’s surprise general election victory in 2015, would be playing a role as part of his overhaul of the Downing Street operation. This morning Dominic Raab, the deputy PM, confirmed the move, saying Crosby would be an “important part” of the shake-up. (See 10.39am.)
But Crosby’s role may have been exaggerated, because Crosby himself says he is not taking a formal job in No 10. In an article for Middle East Eye, Peter Oborne says he spoke to Crosby last night, and Crosby said that he was in Australia, that he had been there for months, and that he would not be back in the UK for several weeks. Crosby also told Oborne:
I am not going into No 10 or working in that way. If any Conservative PM asked for advice I would give it.
Met police say they will not disclose names of anyone fined over partygate
The Metropolitan police has said it is not intending to name those issued with fines as part of its partgate investigation into Downing Street and Whitehall.
In a statement issued today the Met said:
As it has for all fixed penalty notices issued during the pandemic, the MPS will follow the College of Policing Approved Professional Practice for Media Relations which states that ‘Identities of people dealt with by cautions, speeding fines and other fixed penalties – out-of-court disposals – should not be released or confirmed.’
Our approach during the pandemic has been to confirm the number of FPNs issued to people at particular events and to explain what those FPNs were issued for.
Amid expectation that the PM and his wife may need to be spoken to by Met detectives over a party in their flat in November 2020, and other events Johnson attended, the news will cause concern.
Police policy is to usually name people only when they are charged or summonsed for an offence and a criminal investigation has progressed to the stage where guilt or innocence will be determined by a court. There are limited, ill-defined exceptions. Thus those interviewed as witnesses, or suspects, are not usually named.
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Levelling up will 'change economic geography of country', cabinet told
And here are some non-partygate lines from the Downing Street lobby briefing.
- Boris Johnson will hold a press conference in Ukraine with the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, this afternoon, the PM’s spokesman said.
- The spokesman claimed that Boris Johnson has been “very much spearheading the international response” to the Ukraine crisis. “I don’t think there can be any doubt that he continues to play a leading role in this space,” the spokesman said. When it was put to him the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has spoken to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, twice in the space of four days, suggesting that France is leading the international response, the spokesman replied:
I don’t think totting up the numbers of calls is necessarily the sole arbitrating factor of how this is decided.
- Johnson is expected to speak to Putin tomorrow afternoon, the spokesman said. The two leaders were meant to talk on Monday, but the call was delayed because Johnson was making a statement to MPs about the Sue Gray report.
- Johnson took a Covid test, which was negative, before he left for Ukraine, the spokesman said. Yesterday Johnson was in close contact with Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, who tested positive last night.
- Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, told cabinet that the levelling up white paper being published tomorrow will “change the economic geography of the country”, the spokesman said. He said:
The prime minister said the policy represented a great moral mission that has the potential for fantastic economic benefit. Levelling up secretary Michael Gove said the aim of levelling up was to change the economic geography of the country and that the white paper set out the tools needed to achieve this, including investment in education and skills and further devolution of powers outside of Westminster.
The prime minister said the white paper would mark a significant milestone in setting out the government’s vision for the country, building on the work already achieved and making it clear to the public that we have a plan in place to deliver on the people’s priorities.
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No 10 refuses to commit to disclosing names of anyone from Downing Street who might get fined over parties
Here are the main lines from the Downing Street lobby briefing on partygate.
- The prime minister’s spokesman refused to commit to No 10 disclosing the names of anyone in Downing Street fined over illegal parties. Asked if No 10 would disclose this information, the spokesman said:
I’m not going to get into speculating. It’s a matter for the police what they say with that regard.
The spokesman also said the fact that the police are investigating 12 events does not necessarily mean the rules were broken. “The police have said this does not itself mean that they will decide to take further action or that there has necessarily been a breach of regulations,” he said. (In fact, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said last week that these cases were only being investigated because there was little chance of their being a “reasonable defence”.)
- The spokesman said that No 10 intended to publish the full version of the Sue Gray report after the police investigation is over - but that some confidential details could be withheld. Asked if the full final report would be published, he
So I’m not going to speculate on exactly what she she might provide. I think,
As I said before we published this update, it is absolutely our intention to publish what we receive. Publishing names and certain details from from fact-finding work may compromise our commitment to confidentiality and anonymity if that applies. So we’d needed take heed of that.
But the spokesman said their intention, when the final document was published, would be to publish the full text of what they received from Gray, which is what they did yesterday.
- The spokesman said that Johnson “stands by” what he said about Keir Starmer and Jimmy Savile in the Commons yesterday (a false slur), but the spokesman would not repeat the allegation himself. “As a civil servant it wouldn’t be right for me to repeat something which relates to a political aspect of the prime minister’s work,” he said.
- He said the partygate scandal was not discussed at cabinet today.
Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, also told MPs that he was concerned about what was happening to the reputation of parliament. Just after he reprimanded Boris Johnson for his anti-Starmer Jimmy Savile smear (see 12.49pm), Hoyle said people assumed he had a power to police what gets said in the chamber that he does not possess. He told MPs:
Unfortunately the public out there think I’ve got this magic power. You give me the power. If you’re not happy with the power I’ve got, it’s in your hands to change it.
As Speaker, Hoyle has to enforce Erskine May, the parliamentary rulebook, which bans MPs from using unparliamentary language. Calling another MP a liar is one example.
But the Speaker does not have the power to stop MPs saying things that are untrue. And although ministers who do mislead the Commons are expected to correct the record, the Speaker has no power to compel them to do so.
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Johnson reprimanded by Speaker over Jimmy Savile slur against Starmer
In the Commons Chris Matheson (Lab) has just used a point of order to ask about Boris Johnson’s Jimmy Savile slur against Keir Starmer yesterday. (See 9.28am.) He said:
There are many, many victims of that awful, awful person and for [Johnson] to use that scandal and that tragedy in the way that he did, I felt that was inappropriate, tasteless, but perhaps out of order.
Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, says nothing disorderly (ie, technically against the rules) was said by the PM. But he went on to strongly deprecate what Johnson said.
This is what he said.
I am not responsible for members’ contributions and will seek not to intervene unless something is said which is disorderly.
Procedurally nothing disorderly occurred but such allegations should not be made lightly, especially in view of the guidance of Erskine May about good temper, moderation being the characteristics of parliamentary debate.
While they may not have been disorderly, I am far from satisfied that the comments in question were appropriate on this occasion.
I want to see more compassionate, reasonable politics in this house, and that sort of comment can only inflame opinions and generate disregard for this house.
I’ve got to say, I want a nicer parliament. And the only way we can get a nicer parliament is by being more honourable in the debates that we have. Please, let us show each other respect as well as tolerance.
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At the Downing Street lobby briefing the prime minister’s spokesman refused to commit to disclosing if Boris Johnson, or other people working at No 10, get fined by the police for breaching Covid rules, my colleague Peter Walker reports.
New: Downing Street decline to say if they will announce publicly if Boris Johnson or any No 10 staff are fined for Covid breaches.
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) February 1, 2022
I will post more from the briefing shortly.
Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, has unveiled a “sector vision” review to be published in the summer as part of the government’s commitment to levelling up. As PA Media reports, opening the Creative Coalition Festival 2022, Dorries revealed she was intending to provide “close to £50m” to support creative businesses across the UK. The investment includes a £21m UK Global Screen Fund and an £18.4m extension for the creative scale up programme to “support the fastest growing creative businesses across the country”.
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The UK’s Covid-19 death toll has passed 180,000, according to new figures from the Office for National Statistics.
A total of 1,264 deaths occurred in England and Wales in the week ending 21 January which mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate, taking the UK-wide total to 180,622.
The number of deaths in the most recent weeks was above the five-year average in private homes, but below the average in hospitals and care homes.
The figures also show that there have now been just under 45,000 deaths in care homes in England and Wales since the start of the pandemic.
Around one in nine or 11.6% of all deaths registered in England and Wales in the week to 21 January mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate.
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Photograph: Peter Nicholls/Reuters
Ian Blackford, the SNP leader at Westminster, said this morning he refused to withdraw his claim in the Commons yesterday that Boris Johnson had misled MPs because he did not want to stoop to Johnson’s level. Blackford’s behaviour led to him being told to leave the chamber (although he left first anyway) because he was in breach of parliamentary rules saying MPs must not call each other liars in the chamber.
Blackford told ITV’s Good Morning Britain:
It seems, I have to say, slightly perverse that I’m the one that is to be thrown out of the House of Commons on the basis of standing up and telling the truth.
Now, if I had withdrawn what I’d said yesterday in the House of Commons I would have been guilty of doing what the prime minister has done, and that would have been lying to everybody watching.
One of these days the prime minister is going to have to accept that he has abused the trust that was put in him when he became prime minister. He should have gone by now.
Blackford also said that calling Johnson a liar in the chamber, and getting thrown out, was not a premeditated stunt.
Starmer says even Tory MPs disapproved of PM Savile 'slur' against him
Keir Starmer was doing an interview round too this morning, and he described Boris Johnson’s claim in the Commons yesterday that as DPP he had failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile as a desperate “slur”. (See 9.28am.) He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain:
It’s a slur, it’s untrue, it’s desperate from the prime minister. I was really struck yesterday in the house at how many Conservative MPs were disgusted at that untruth from the dispatch box. Of course, on our side people were disgusted. But his own MPs couldn’t believe their prime minister had stooped that low.
He’s degraded the whole office. And this is how he operates. He drags everybody into the gutter with him. Everybody he touches, everybody that comes into contact with him is contaminated by this prime minister.
Starmer also ridiculed Johnson’s refusal to say yesterday whether or not he was at the event in his Downing Street flat on 13 November 2020 that was reportedly a party with Abba music hosted by Carrie Johnson, his wife, to celebrate the departure of Dominic Cummings. Johnson told MPs yesterday that he could not answer, because this was a matter for the police investigation. Starmer told BBC Breakfast:
What happened was the Metropolitan police asked that the full report not be published at the moment, but the idea that that prevents the prime minister from saying whether he was at a party on a particular day is absolute nonsense. Absolute nonsense.
I think the spectacle of the prime minister standing at the dispatch box being asked, ‘Were you at this party on the 13th of November in your own flat?’ And he says, ‘I can’t answer that because of the investigation ...’
He knows very well whether he was in the flat – and he’s taking us for fools. I think one of the features of this particular set of circumstances is not only did the prime minister and others break the rules, but they’ve taken the country for fools by insulting our intelligence in the cover-up that’s gone on since.
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Tory MPs 'overwhelmingly' back Boris Johnson, says Raab
Here are some more lines from Dominic Raab’s media interviews this morning.
- Raab, the deputy PM, claimed Conservative MPs “overwhelmingly” support Boris Johnson. He told Times Radio:
On the specific issues Sue Gray cited, I think [Johnson] has addressed all of those questions in a fulsome way and, frankly, at the political level, my experiences in the chamber but also at the meeting of Conservative MPs – overwhelmingly MPs backing him, wanting to see us getting on with the job. The economy is firing, the vaccine rollout has been a spectacular success. People, and I think our constituents, want to see us getting on with the job.
- Raab cast doubt on whether the full Sue Gray report would eventually be published. Last night, after a day refusing to commit to publishing it once the police investigation is over, No 10 bowed to pressure from Conservative MPs who were calling for this, and said Gray would be free to publish all her findings at that point. But in an interview with LBC Raab at one point implied there was not much more for Gray to say. He said:
It’s not clear to me that there is anything more, other than any conclusions that she will draw once that investigation is concluded, that will come forward.
But later in the same interview Raab said: “Anything further that she gives the PM will be published.” Gray has made it clear that she does have a lot more to say. She called the document released yesterday an “update”, not a report, and she said she could not produce a “meaningful report” because she had been asked by the police to hold so much material back. It is not clear whether Raab was deliberately implying that the full findings might be held back, or whether he was just speaking carelessly, and trying to imply there was nothing much new to learn.
- Raab confirmed that Boris Johnson will give the Tory election strategist Sir Lynton Crosby a role in No 10 as part of his move to improve the way Downing Street operates. Johnson announced this to Tory MPs when he addressed them in private last night. Raab said Johnson wants the party to “get back to doing the job that people elected us to do”. He went on:
Lynton Crosby is an important element of that. He has got a good strategic nose and a good sense of the direction of public opinion and a good place – not to formulate, that’s not what we do – but to test the work that we are doing to make sure we are nailing the priorities of the people.
- Raab played down the significance of Johnson missing his call with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, yesterday. He said there were “always scheduling issues between any two heads of government”.
- Raab said the findings of the police inquiry into partygate should be published. He said:
Justice must be done and seen to be done. But I don’t think I need to lecture or indeed advise the Metropolitan police about how to conduct an investigation.
This might seem like a statement of the obvious, but the police intend to issue fines to people who have broken Covid rules at No 10, and normally the police do not publicise the names of people fined in these circumstances.
- Raab sidestepped a question about whether Johnson would resign if he was personally issued with a fine.
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Partygate scandal 'will break coalition that is Conservative party', says Andrew Mitchell
Andrew Mitchell, the Conservative former chief whip and former international development secretary, told Boris Johnson in the Commons yesterday that he could no longer support him. This morning, in an interview on the Today programme, he said that the partygate scandal could break up the coalition that sustains the Conservative party. He said:
I think this is a crisis that is not going to go away and is doing very great damage to the party. It is more corrosive in my judgment than the expenses scandal was and it will break the coalition that is the Conservative party.
Mitchell was referring to the Conservative party’s ability to retain support from significant chunks of both middle-class and working-class voters, or Telegraph readers and Sun readers, to put it crudely. This has always been a strength for the party, although Johnson’s appeal to “red wall” voters tipped the balance somewhat.
He also accused Johnson of running the government like a medieval court.
I think the problem is that Boris is running a modern government like a medieval court. You need to rule and govern through the structures, through Whitehall, through the cabinet for National Security Council.
Many of us thought he would govern in the way he did when he was mayor of London, through being a chairman of a board, running a very good team – that is not what has happened here.
Some may wonder why it took Mitchell quite so long to conclude that Johnson was a liability for his party. Last year he published his memoir in which he recalled how, before he backed Johnson for the Tory leadership, Johnson promised him that he would keep the Department for International Development as a separate department, and that he would stick to the 0.7% aid spending target. Johnson subsequently broke both promises.
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Julian Smith, the Conservative former chief whip and former Northern Ireland secretary, has said that Boris Johnson’s Savile smear against Keir Starmer cannot be dismissed as just part of the cut and thrust of parliamentary debate, which is what Dominic Raab, the deputy PM, tried in his Today programme interview this morning. (See 9.28am.)
The smear made against Keir Starmer relating to Jimmy Saville yesterday is wrong & cannot be defended. It should be withdrawn. False and baseless personal slurs are dangerous, corrode trust & can't just be accepted as part of the cut & thrust of parliamentary debate.
— Julian Smith MP (@JulianSmithUK) February 1, 2022
Gavin Barwell, who was chief of staff to Theresa May in Downing Street when Smith was chief whip, says he agrees.
Well said @JulianSmithUK https://t.co/1EPcMau2YU
— Gavin Barwell (@GavinBarwell) February 1, 2022
Raab admits no evidence justifies Johnson’s anti-Starmer Savile smear
Good morning. Boris Johnson reminded Tory MPs last night that Covid almost killed him, but his own conduct has led to him suffering a series of political near-death experiences and he went through another yesterday. By the end of the day he was in a better position than he was at the end of his statement to MPs – he belatedly promised that the full Sue Gray report would eventually be published one day, having refused to make that commitment earlier, and his speech to Conservative MPs at a private meeting in the evening went down much better than his hubristic and tone-deaf performance in the Commons – but nothing has been resolved. Once again, Westminster is waiting for the full Gray report before knowing how this scandal will end.
Here is our overnight story, by Rowena Mason and Jessica Elgot, about yesterday’s drama in the Commons.
Dominic Raab, the deputy prime minister, and Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, have both been giving interviews this morning. Starmer’s comments are in line with his much-praised speech shaming Johnson in the Commons yesterday, and he has repeated his call for the PM to resign. Raab has mostly been urging viewers and listeners to wait for the police investigation into partygate to conclude.
But Raab, who is justice secretary as well as deputy PM, found himself unable to repeat or substantiate one of Johnson’s smears in the Commons yesterday. Replying to Starmer, Johnson said the Labour leader was “a former director of public prosecutions – although he spent most of his time prosecuting journalists and failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile, as far as I can make out”. As this Reuters fact check explains, the claim that Starmer was to blame for Savile not being prosecuted is false.
On the Today programme, Raab described the remark as part of “the cut and thrust of parliamentary debates and exchanges”. But he admitted that he was not prepared to repeat the remark himself, and he added: “I don’t have the facts to justify that.”
Asked if Johnson had the facts to justify his claim, Raab said that was for the PM to say.
I will post more from the Raab and Starmer interviews soon.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: Boris Johnson chairs cabinet.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
11.30am: Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, takes questions in the Commons.
After 12.30pm: MPs begin a debate on a Labour motion criticising the government for writing off £4.3bn lost to Covid fraud.
Afternoon: Johnson is in Kyiv for talks with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The two leaders are expected to hold a press conference.
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.
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