Johnson tells committee ‘you haven’t got any such evidence’ – as he hits out at Harman

Continuing his statement after the Brexit deal vote, Mr Johnson says that the overwhelming evidence that the committee has assembled is that senior officials, advisers and civil servants among others “believe that the rules and the guidance were being complied with”. 

“And what is so telling is the number of officials who say the same thing and the total silence of the written or electronic record about concerns that anyone wanted to raise with me. 

“It would be one thing if the committee had come here today and said, look, here are the emails or here are the WhatsApps that show that you were warned about rule-breaking before you made your statements to the House. 

“You haven’t got any such evidence because that never happened.”

Mr Johnson says if it is being suggested that rule-breaking was obvious to him, “then let’s be clear – you are saying you’re not only accusing me of lying, you’re accusing those civil servants, advisers, MPs, of lying about what they believed at the to be going on. And as far as I know, you’re not giving any of the chance to explain themselves with their own oral evidence. 

“I don’t think you seriously mean to accuse those individuals of lying and I don’t think you can seriously mean to accuse me of lying.”

He says that there are “some features of this proceeding that are extremely peculiar”.

Johnson takes aim at Harman

Speaking with “utmost respect” to the chair, Harriet Harman, he says: “You have said some things about this matter before reading the evidence, which are plainly and wrongly prejudicial, or prejudge the very issue on which you are adjudicating”. 

Mr Johnson’s allies have previously criticised Ms Harman over an April 2022 tweet in which she suggested that by accepting a fine for breaking COVID rules he was also admitting to misleading the House. 

“I’m going to put your earlier remarks down to the General Cotton thrust of politics and trust in what you have stressed at the outset, the impartiality that the committee insists upon and then sits upon,” Mr Johnson says. 

He adds that so much of the committee’s interrogation is “theoretically irrelevant, but I’m going to take that in my stride because I agree with what you said the outset”. 

“It is your job and I want to help you to understand why I said what I said to Parliament and whether I deliberately set out to deceive. And I emphatically did not.” – (SKY NEWS)

Boris Johnson starts his statement by telling the chair – Harriet Harman – that he needs to vote in a few minutes. She reminds him that there are many MPs in the House, and that if there is a vote called, they’ll suspend this session to allow them to.

It’s significant though as we are expecting Johnson to vote against the government’s new Windsor Framework later today – the new post-Brexit trade arrangements agreed for Northern Ireland.

He’s rebelling against the government, on their attempts to remedy issues caused by a post-Brexit deal he agreed as prime minister – the Northern Ireland Protocol.

This day is like one big recap of the last four years of Boris Johnson’s career.

Before starting his statement, Johnson was asked by Harman if he believed his written submission the committee has published is true. He said: “I do”.

Johnson goes on to say that on a number of days over 20 months, gatherings took place at Downing Street that “went past the point where they could be said to be necessary for work purposes”.

“That was wrong, I bitterly regret it, I understand the public anger and I continue to apologise for what happened on my watch,” he says.

He says the purpose of this inquiry is not to reopen “so-called Partygate”, it’s to discover whether or not I lied to Parliament, misled colleagues and the country about what I knew and believed about those gatherings.

“I’m here to say to you, hand on heart, that I did not lie to the House.”

Johnson says that before Sue Gray’s report and the outcome of the police investigation were made public there was “a near universal belief” at No 10 that rules and guidance were being complied with.

He says this belief “governed what I said in the House” and that as soon as it was clear this was wrong he corrected the record.

Johnson adds that he was “deeply shocked” when fines were issued by police for gatherings in government buildings.

Johnson said the whole of the No 10 operation “all knew how vital it was to maintain public confidence in the fight against Covid”.

He adds they all knew we should do what they had asked the public to do.

Johnson says the only exception is the testimony of his former aide Dominic Cummings, who he says has “every motive to lie” and is not supported by “documentary evidence”.

He says the committee has not gathered any evidence that he lied, but that it has in fact gathered evidence he did not know the rules were broken.

The former PM says he has asked the committee to publish all the evidence it produced, but it has not.

He also accuses them of refusing to allow his legal team to add their own evidence.

Johnson used his statement to downplay some of the evidence received by the committee about alleged rule-breaking parties.

Photos show him “getting a few words of thanks at a work event”, he said.

Or, Johnson asserted, they show “events which I was never fined for attending”.

If rules were broken, this must have been “obvious” to others – including the current Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak – too, he said.

Johnson claims the committee has “found nothing to show that I was warned in advance that events in No 10 were illegal”.

He also says no-one raised any “anxieties” about any events before or after they took place.

If there had been such an anxiety this “unquestionably would have been escalated to me”, he says. – (BBC)

We are looking at whether Johnson corrected errors in good time – Harman

Harman continues to define the scope of the committee’s work.

She says the panel is looking at whether Johnson’s statements were accurate, how “quickly and comprehensively” any misleading statements he made were corrected.

The question is whether any errors were rectified in “good time”, she says. – (BBC)

Harriet Harman opens hearing 

Committee Chairwoman, Labour’s Harriet Harman, starts by saying the purpose of the hearing is to decide whether or not Boris Johnson misled the House of Commons, if he committed contempt of the House and if this was intentional or reckless.

She says misleading the House might sound like a technical issue but it’s a matter of great importance.

She says if what ministers tell us is not the truth then we can’t do our job and democracy depends upon trust.

She adds that everyone makes mistakes and when minsters do so they are expected to correct it at the earliest opportunity. – BBC