Former British prime minister Boris Johnson goes for a run near his home in Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, Oxfordshire, Britain, on June 15.TOBY MELVILLE/Reuters
A British parliamentary committee has accused former prime minister Boris Johnson of repeated contempt of Parliament for deliberately misleading MPs about violations of COVID-19 restrictions by him and his staff.
In a 106-page report released Thursday, the House of Commons Privileges Committee offered a blistering account of how Mr. Johnson misled Parliament regarding six social gatherings in his office during lockdown restrictions in 2020 and 2021 and how he was “complicit in the campaign of abuse and attempted intimidation of the committee.”
“We came to the view that some of Mr. Johnson’s denials and explanations were so disingenuous that they were by their very nature deliberate attempts to mislead the committee and the House, while others demonstrated deliberation because of the frequency with which he closed his mind to the truth,” the report said. “For these reasons we conclude that Mr. Johnson’s conduct was deliberate and that he has committed a serious contempt of the House.”
The committee added that there was “no precedent for a Prime Minister having been found to have deliberately misled the House.”
The report compounds a tumultuous year for Mr. Johnson and will likely reopen deep divisions within the Conservative Party.
Mr. Johnson was forced out as party leader and prime minister last summer in part because of the controversy over “partygate.” He has also made no secret of his dislike for Rishi Sunak, who took over as leader and Prime Minister in October. Mr. Johnson has blamed Mr. Sunak for leading the push against him, and the two have clashed recently over Mr. Johnson’s bid to appoint several former aides and supporters to the House of Lords.
In a final flourish, Mr. Johnson abruptly resigned as an MP last week in an attempt to pre-empt the committee’s findings. He issued a scathing indictment of the committee’s work, calling it a “kangaroo court” and a “witch hunt.”
The committee said Thursday that, had he not stepped down, it would have recommended his suspension from Parliament for 90 days, one of the longest sanctions on record. The suspension would have also triggered a by-election in his riding.
The committee further recommended that Mr. Johnson not be entitled to a former MP’s pass to Westminster, depriving him of unfettered access to Parliament.
All seven committee members – four Conservative MPs, two Labour MPs and one Scottish National Party MP – signed the report, which has been referred to the House of Commons. A free vote of MPs will be held Monday on whether to approve the report’s findings and proposed sanctions.
“It will be a painful process and a sad process for all of us, the task that we face on Monday,” said Penny Mordaunt, the government leader in the House of Commons. “But all of us must do what we think is right, and others must leave us alone to do so.”
The committee had been investigating Mr. Johnson for 14 months over statements he made in Parliament about parties at Downing Street during the height of the pandemic, when the country was under tight restrictions for social gatherings. London’s Metropolitan Police issued 126 fines – known as fixed penalty notices – to 83 government staff for breaches of lockdown rules. Mr. Johnson and Mr. Sunak, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, each paid one £50 penalty.
Mr. Johnson told the House of Commons and the committee that no rules had been broken and that the gatherings – which included a birthday party and several farewell events for resigning staffers – were work-related functions.
He enraged committee members last week after he was given an early copy of the report on a confidential basis. He immediately went public with the findings, lashed out at the committee and announced his resignation.
In its report Thursday, the committee said Mr. Johnson’s actions amounted to further contempt. The former prime minister didn’t merely criticize the fairness of the committee’s procedures, the report said, “he also attacks in very strong, indeed vitriolic, terms the integrity, honesty and honour of its members. This attack on a committee carrying out its remit from the democratically elected House itself amounts to an attack on our democratic institutions.”
In a lengthy rebuttal, Mr. Johnson shot back at the committee Thursday and called the report “rubbish,” “deranged,” “patently absurd” and “a load of complete tripe.” He reiterated that the events were work-related and within the COVID-19 regulations in place at the time.
“We didn’t believe that what we were doing was wrong, and after a year of work, the Privileges Committee has found not a shred of evidence that we did,” he said in a statement.
“This is a dreadful day for MPs and for democracy,” he added. “This decision means that no MP is free from vendetta, or expulsion on trumped up charges by a tiny minority who want to see him or her gone from the Commons.”
A handful of Tory MPs came to Mr. Johnson’s defence Thursday and said they would not support the sanctions. “I am appalled at what I have read and the spiteful, vindictive and overreaching conclusions of the report,” said Brendan Clarke-Smith.
But others said it was time for the party to move on. “The longer this public pantomime drags on, the more Boris loses support from a once very loyal base,” said Tory MP Tobias Ellwood. “He was loved by members across the country, but this is changing before our very eyes. There’s now disappointment, even anger, that the party, the activists are left to pick up the pieces.”