4 2GN The Sunday Times May 22, 2022
NEWS
Tension
is high
among
staffand David Davidovich, a close
associate of Roman
Abramovich, according to the
Globe and Mail in Toronto.
Announcing the sanctions,
Melanie Joly, Canada’s foreign
minister, also confirmed an
import ban on vodka, caviar
and diamonds.
“The Putin regime must,
and will, answer for their
unjustifiable acts,” Joly said.
The decision by one of
Britain’s close allies to
sanction Lebedev Sr is likely
to prompt renewed scrutiny
of Johnson’s decision almost
two years ago to hand a
peerage to Evgeny, 42.
It will also prompt
questions as to why JohnsonAlexander Lebedev, the
former KGB agent whose son
was ennobled by Boris
Johnson, has been sanctioned
by Canada as part of its latest
retaliatory measures against
President Putin’s regime.
The Russian billionaire, 62,
who bought the Evening
Standard and Independent
newspapers with his son
Evgeny more than a decade
ago, was one of 14 individuals
sanctioned over their links to
the Kremlin.
The list also included Gleb
Frank, the owner of a leading
Russian fishery company,
Harry Yorke
Deputy Political Editor
chose to meet Lebedev Sr on
a number of occasions over
the past decade, despite
knowing he was a former
Russian spy.
Two months ago it was
revealed that the prime
minister had pressed ahead
with nominating Lebedev Jr
for a peerage against the
advice of the House of Lords
Appointments Commission.
The commission received
an intelligence assessment,
compiled by MI5 and MI6,
which suggested granting a
peerage to Lebedev Jr posed a
national security threat.
Sources familiar with the
intelligence have said it was
concerned primarily withLebedev Sr and fears that he
may continue to hold close
ties to the Kremlin.
While Lebedev Sr has
financed the Russian
anti-corruption newspaper
Novaya Gazeta, he has also
defended Putin’s invasion of
Crimea and invested millions
of dollars in the Russian-held
peninsula.
Johnson refused to heed
the warnings, dismissing it as
“anti-Russianism”, before
successfully pressing for
Lebedev Jr to be ennobled.
The disclosures prompted
Labour to demand the
government publish all
documents related to the
peerage.a former Marine who had
identified her home address
and was threatening to break
into her bedroom.
Jess Phillips, Labour’s
shadow domestic violence
minister, said two people
were jailed for harassing her.
Peter Bone, Tory MP for
Wellingborough, told how a
“Scottish revolutionary
group” had conducted a
mock execution of his son on
social media. “You can
imagine the trauma that
gave,” Bone said. “We tried to
keep that away from him. He
was about 12 at the time.”
The interviews, to be
shown tomorrow on Channel
4’s Dispatches, wereconducted by the Labour MP
Kim Leadbeater. Her sister
and predecessor as the
member for Batley & Spen, Jo
Cox, was murdered outside
her constituency surgery a
week before the 2016 EU
referendum by a far-right
extremist.
Leadbeater spoke to more
than 60 MPs for the
programme. Almost all said
they had received abusive or
threatening messages, and
three quarters said they had
been threatened with
physical harm. One in three
of the female MPs said they
had been threatened with
sexual violence.
Nicky Morgan, a formerConservative cabinet
minister, said: “I remember
doing media interviews and
saying, ‘I’m sorry, I just can’t
leave the building because
I’m not sure I can take much
more of being yelled at’. It
was death threats but also
sexual threats,” she said.
Leadbeater was moved to
investigate the abuse received
by members of parliament
after the murder of Sir David
Amess in October. The Tory
MP was stabbed to death at
his constituency surgery in
Leigh-on-Sea in Essex.
MPs Under Threat: Dispatches
is on Channel 4 tomorrow
at 7.30pmSue Gray has told allies that she was sur-
prised that Boris Johnson was only fined
for attending a birthday party thrown for
him during the first lockdown.
According to those close to the senior
civil servant, who will this week deliver
her definitive report into lockdown-
breaking parties in Downing Street, she
regarded the event to mark the prime
minister’s 56th birthday as the least seri-
ous breach of rules that she investigated.
A source familiar with her thinking said:
“Sue is not a lawyer but in her opinion the
birthday party was the least egregious
event she has looked into.”
That Gray feels the police have let
Johnson off too lightly suggests that far
from being over, Johnson’s partygate
hangover has several more days to run.
The Metropolitan Police concluded
their £460,000 investigation into
partygate last week, with Johnson
escaping any further fines.
He received just one fixed-penalty
notice for attending the celebration in the
Cabinet room on June 19, 2020, but is
reported to have attended four other
events for which fines were issued to
other people.
The Met’s findings have con-
founded some legal experts and
infuriated Johnson’s critics. The
prime minister and his wife Car-
rie were investigated by police
for only two of the events they
reportedly attended. They
escaped fines for the second
incident the police probed — a
gathering in their official flat
on November 13, 2020, when
Abba music could be heard
playing — because they
argued it was a work event.
Carrie Johnson told police
the gathering of her friends,
who are also political aides,
was a “strategy meeting’’ to dis-
cuss how to deal with the fallout of
the departure from No 10 of Dominic
Cummings.
In total, 126 fixed-penalty notices
were given out to 83 people. Seventy-
three fines were given to 48 women,
and 53 were issued to 35 men. None of
those who were fined, other than
Caroline Wheeler and Harry Yorke
Canada sanctions for Lebedev Sr
reignite row over son’s peerage
A young child has been
diagnosed with monkeypox
in England, bringing the
number of cases to 20 in the
UK, among 145 in 12
countries.
The youngster is in
intensive care in a London
hospital. Most other patients
have been adults, many of
them gay and bisexual men.
Monkeypox causes a fever,
headaches and a rash that
develops large pustules. The
current strain has a fatality
rate of about 1 per cent. The
other main strain, which has
not been found outside
Africa, is more serious with a
fatality rate of 10 per cent.
The virus tends to spread
only among those with
symptoms, making infection
control far simpler than with
the coronavirus. A long
incubation period — six to 13
days — allows a much bigger
window for contact tracing.
A national NHS alert was
sent last week by Dr Thomas
Waite, England’s deputy chiefcomprise at least three
parts: a narrative description of the
multiple events, Gray’s findings on
whether they breached the rules,
and her conclusions as to what should
happen as a result.
It is also expected to include a
summary of the events, which will detail
what was said during the Covid press
conference that day, what the law said at
the time and what was happening in
Downing Street on the day.
Sources say Gray is likely to publish
some of the 300 photographs obtained
through the course of her investigation.
While only a handful have been leaked to
the media since the scandal first erupted
last year, the investigation is said to be
sitting on a compilation which includes
images of the prime minister drinking
and staff partying.
MacNamara, the former director-
general of the propriety and ethics
team at the Cabinet Office, is under-
stood to be the subject of some of
Gray’s most stinging criticisms.
She is alleged to have brought a
karaoke machine to a gathering
organised to mark the departure of
Hannah Young, a No 10 private sec-
retary.
The event on June 18, 2020, in the
cabinet secretary’s office in
70 Whitehall was described as
“raucous” and ended in a brawl
between two members of staff.
It is believed Gray has emails
which show that staff discussed
the gathering in advance and
were warned that it broke
the rules.
Reynolds, who has been tipped to
become the new UK ambassador to
Saudi Arabia, is expected to come out
of the report badly. Gray has
obtained correspondence between
the former No 10 communications
chief Lee Cain and Reynolds ahead of
the bring-your-own-booze event in
the Downing Street garden in
May 2020.
The evidence shows that Cain told
Reynolds the event was a bad idea but
that he was ignored and it went ahead
anyway. However, Cain is not expected to
emerge unscathed, having attended a
lockdown gathering to mark his
departure from No 10 in November 2020
where many of those present were
drinking and socialising.
Gray believes that the earliest the
report can be delivered is Tuesday or
Wednesday. She also fears it could be
delayed by officials who try to block the
publication of their names.
A number of the officials Gray intends
to name are also furious that the terms on
which they agreed to engage with her
inquiry have seemingly been broken.
Several gave evidence believing they
would not be named but have been told
the circumstances have changed. If
tensions are already riding high among
staff in Downing Street, they are unlikely
to be calmed by speculation that civil
servants could also face internal
disciplinary action, irrespective of
whether they were fined. Punishments
could range from an official warning to a
bar on promotion.
Even after Gray’s report, the prime
minister will face further scrutiny by the
Commons privileges committee over
whether he is in contempt of parliament
by insisting he had not broken any coro-
navirus laws and was unaware of any par-
ties. Yvonne Fovargue, a little-known
Labour MP, is tipped to lead the investiga-
tion. Under the ministerial code, those
found to have misled parliament are
expected to resign.
For months Johnson has told anyone
who will listen that while he was badly let
down, the facts will exonerate him. He
will be hoping that the content of Gray’s
report will not make for more sobering
reading.Johnson, his wife and the chancel-
lor, Rishi Sunak, have been named.
Yesterday Gray was engaged in a
bizarre briefing war with No 10 over
claims that she instigated a meeting
with the prime minister last month.
It was initially suggested that the
meeting was arranged to “clarify her
intentions” for what would happen once
the police investigation was concluded
and that it also touched upon whether
photographs from the parties would be
revealed to the public.
But a spokesman for the Gray inquiry
has disputed this. The “stock-take” meet-
ing was apparently initiated by Samantha
Jones, No 10’s new permanent secretary,
after she suggested Gray should give the
prime minister an update on publication
timings. Stephen Barclay, Downing
Street’s chief of staff, also attended.
“The idea that Sue would divulge
anything about her report to the PM is for
the birds,” a source said. “She is
determined to do a proper job.’’
Gray is understood to have found
widespread breaking of the rules, an
ingrained drinking culture and, most sig-
nificantly, a “mass failure” of leadership
in Downing Street and at the top of the
civil service that led junior members of
staff to believe that they were behaving as
was expected of them.
“Many people at the time seemed to
have a bunker mentality and thought that
they were exempt from the rules because
they believed they were saving the
world,” a source said.
Gray plans to name a number of
high-profile Downing Street aides and
civil servants who were either integral to
the rule-breaking or because they form
an “important” part of the “narrative”
of her report.
They include Martin Reynolds, John-
son’s former principal private secre-
tary; Helen MacNamara, the former
head of propriety and ethics in the Cab-
inet Office; and Lord Sedwill and
Simon Case, the former and
serving heads of the civil
service. They are all believed
to have received letters to seek
their responses to elements of
her report and have until 5pm
today to respond.
The report is expected tohangover
Johnson’s
partygate
Scores of MPs have revealed
harrowing stories of abuse,
harassment and being
threatened with death and
sexual violence.
MPs across the political
spectrum have given highly
personal interviews about the
risks they face, including one
MP who had to warn her
children she might be killed.
Naz Shah, Labour MP for
Bradford West, said she was
forced to have “morbid
conversations” with her
family. Heidi Allen, a former
Conservative MP, revealed
that police had to track downMPs share tales of harassment
and threats to their children
Caroline Wheeler
Political EditorSue Gray’s report on No 10’s
lockdown-busting events is due out
in days. The PM is likely to survive,
but its lurid content could leave
senior civil servants with a sore headmedical officer, warning of
the increase in infections and
advising hospitals, GPs and
pharmacists of the steps to
take with suspected cases.
As health officials said that
cases were expected to rise
further, hospitals have been
warned to make sure they
have enough PPE for staff to
assess and treat infections.
Dr Susan Hopkins, the UK
Health Security Agency’s
chief medical adviser, said: “A
notable proportion of recent
cases in the UK and Europe
have been found in gay andbisexual men so we are
particularly encouraging
them to be alert to the
symptoms and seek help if
concerned.”
Sir Peter Horby, director of
the Pandemic Sciences
Institute at Oxford University,
said: “The important thing is
we interrupt transmission
and this doesn’t become
established in the human
population in Europe.”
Monkeypox, a virus from
the same family as smallpox,
is normally linked to travel
from affected areas in Africa.This time, however, the virus
is spreading among people
who have not been abroad.
The UK had a total of eight
cases in 2018, 2019 and 2021.
All those with confirmed
symptoms had travelled from
Nigeria, where monkeypox is
endemic.
Jonathan Ball, professor of
virology at Nottingham
University, said: “The fact
that we’ve got more than a
handful of cases is very
unusual. I’m surprised at the
scale of human-to-human
transmission.“We need to ask whether
there is a change in the
behaviour of the virus; or a
change in the resistance to
that virus in the host; or
whether it has been
introduced into a particular
population that’s aiding its
spread.”
Unlike the coronavirus,
monkeypox is far less likely to
produce variants. Genomic
sequencing of a monkeypox
case linked to Portugal found
the sample was closely
related to viruses seen in the
UK, Israel and Singapore in2018 and 2019. Experts have
said in recent years that
people are more susceptible
since routine smallpox
vaccination ended. The
vaccine provides 85 per cent
protection against
monkeypox. Smallpox was
eradicated in the UK in 1978.
Paul Hunter, professor of
health protection at the
University of East Anglia, said
monkeypox was unlikely to
become a pandemic and
vaccination should bring it
under control “fairly
quickly”.Child in intensive care with monkeypox as cases in Britain climb to 20
Ben Spencer and
Shaun Lintern
Boris and Carrie
Johnson have been
fined by police.
Simon Case, left,
faces searching
questions as head
of the civil service.
Helen MacNamara,
right, allegedly
organised karaoke145
Total number of cases
so far in 12 countries