The Times - UK (2022-05-27)

the times | Friday May 27 2022 11

News

PM’s spokesmen sorry for

lying about No 10 parties

Geraldine Scott Political Reporter

Boris Johnson’s representatives have

apologised for not telling journalists

the truth when they were questioned

about parties in Downing Street.

Johnson’s official spokesman and his

deputy, who are civil servants working

in the No 10 press office, were repeated-

ly asked about gatherings and parties

since the allegations were reported in

November.

Both officials, who are bound by the

civil service code to be truthful and

open and are usually referred to by

their titles and not by name, said

throughout that rules were followed.

However, Sue Gray’s report revealed

that some of the parties were held in the

press office, had been attended by press

office staff or were organised via a press

office email.

Max Blain, Johnson’s official spokes-

man, said: “The prime minister has said,

Civil servants have turned against
Simon Case over his “shocking”
response to the parties in Downing
Street, with senior figures in Whitehall
calling for him to quit.
The cabinet secretary and head of
the civil service is facing “a lot of anger”
among permanent secretaries at his
handling of the controversy.
Case, 43, has refused to apologise for
his attendance at three events
discussed in Sue Gray’s report, or for
the lack of oversight that allowed
drunken parties to be held in No 10.
Instead, he wrote to all Whitehall
staff on Wednesday insisting that he
had “taken responsibility for address-
ing the issues raised in Sue’s report” and
vowing to stay on.
One permanent secretary said that
the letter “did not land well”. Case’s
conduct, laid out in Gray’s report, had
been “devastating” for the reputation of
the civil service. “Morale is on the floor

Five Conservative MPs called for Boris

Johnson to quit within 24 hours, argu-

ing that he lied to parliament and no

longer commands public trust because

of the Downing Street parties saga.

Sue Gray revealed that the prime

minister’s most senior aides were

involved in the planning of parties

which led to drunkenness, fighting,

karaoke and vomiting.

Johnson had repeatedly denied in the

Commons that any parties had taken

place and said he had been assured that

no rules had been broken. He said

yesterday that he was unaware of the

most egregious rule-breaking and

argued that he attended leaving drinks

in a work capacity.

Twenty-two Conservative MPs have

now publicly urged Johnson to resign;

the threshold for a Commons vote on

his leadership would be met when 54

submit letters of no confidence.

Yesterday Stephen Hammond, MP

for the ultra-marginal seat of Wimble-

don and a former minister, announced

that he had submitted a letter of no

confidence “several months” ago.

Hammond said that the conclusions

of Gray’s report “were damning for the

prime minister, the civil service”.

John Baron, the MP for Basildon and

Billericay, said: “For me the most seri-

ous charge against the prime minister is

of knowingly misleading parliament.

Given the scale of rule-breaking in

No 10 I cannot accept that the prime

minister was unaware.

“Therefore his repeated assurance in

parliament that there was no rule-

breaking is simply not credible.”

David Simmonds, Johnson’s consti-

tuency neighbour as the MP for Ruislip,

Northwood and Pinner, said that “it is

clear that while the government and

our policies enjoy the confidence of the

public, the prime minister does not”.

Another Conservative, Angela Rich-

ardson, the MP for Guildford, was less

explicit but effectively said Johnson

should quit, telling constituents: “I am

News

Five more calls

to resign brings

Tory total to 22

Henry Zeffman

Associate Political Editor

Steven Swinford, Fiona Hamilton

clear that had that been a report about

my leadership, I would resign.”

Julian Sturdy, the MP for York Outer,

called for a new leader, saying he could

no longer “give the prime minister the

benefit of the doubt”.

Gray’s report condemned “failures of

leadership” at the heart of government,

for which there was “no excuse”, and

said Johnson must bear responsibility.

But Gray did not investigate allega-

tions of a party in the Downing Street

flat on November 13, 2020, saying that

it would not have been appropriate to

do so after the Metropolitan Police

started their own investigation.

The Times can disclose that Johnson,

his wife and five special advisers who

attended the gathering were all ques-

tioned by police, but none was fined.

It has been claimed that a party was

held to celebrate the departure of

Dominic Cummings, the prime minis-

ter’s most senior adviser. It became

known as the “Abba party” after reports

that music blared out from the flat.

Detectives issued everyone at the

event with questionnaires asking for

them to give an account of what they

were doing. Johnson said that he was

working on rebuilding his team follow-

ing the departure of Cummings and Lee

Cain, his director of communications.

Sir Steve House, the Met’s acting

commissioner, said yesterday that

there was no evidence the prime minis-

ter breached lockdown rules more than

once. He revealed for the first time that

detectives considered the length of

time an individual spent at an event

when deciding whether to issue a fixed

penalty notice. Police considered “dif-

ferent phases” of one event, and House

said pictures could be “deceptive”.

The Met had come under sustained

criticism for failing to explain how it

decided which individuals would be

fined for which events.

House told the London Assembly:

“I’m not particularly concerned about

what the prime minister thinks, I do my

job without fear or favour, as did the

Met in this case.”

Civil servants must share the blame,

letters, page 28

PRU/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGE

Rishi Sunak, flanked

by Boris Johnson,

makes his statement

in the House of

Commons yesterday

Quit now, civil servants tell their boss

because there were so many people

who worked flat out during the

pandemic so the public perception is

incredibly damaging,” the permanent

secretary said.

Officials said the threshold for up-

holding standards must be even higher

for Case than for the prime minister,

and he should have resigned independ-

ently of Boris Johnson’s decision.

“The integrity of the civil service

code and leadership must be at their

highest at this very difficult time,” one

senior official said. “His response has

been pretty shocking”.

There was already some re-

sentment in Whitehall that

Case was fast-tracked into

the job over other perman-

ent secretaries at just 41,

with many questioning

whether he had enough

experience.

Officials accuse him of

failing to stand up to John-

son in meetings and of

being willing to back the

prime minister’s attacks on the civil ser-

vice in order to curry favour. Another

senior Whitehall figure said that “clear-

ly Case should have resigned ages ago

or should have been sacked”.

One government figure said there

was an “understanding” that Case’s

position was untenable and he would

step aside later in the year. “He couldn’t

be seen to resign over partygate

but there is a plan for him to go

sooner rather than later,” he said.

Case is due to be questioned

next month by the public adminis-

tration and constitutional af-

fairs select committee.

William Wragg, its Con-

servative chairman, said

that the parties scandal

would be tackled during his

appearance. “There will be

questions around... a lack

of leadership in the civil

service,” he said.

Chris Smyth Whitehall Editor
Oliver Wright

Simon Case faces “a lot of

anger” over No 10 parties

and I have said on a number of occa-

sions, there were failings both in terms

of what happened and in terms of how

it was handled. The prime minister has

apologised for that and obviously I am

happy to apologise for that as well.”

He said that the regular “wine-time

Fridays” held by the press office and

detailed in Gray’s report had been

banned under new rules on alcohol and

that a fridge brought to store drinks in

had been removed.

6 Nick Robinson has apologised for

wrongly claiming that a cleaner died of

Covid-19 after working at No 10 when

lockdown-busting parties took place.

The BBC presenter was questioning

Steve Barclay, the prime minister’s chief

of staff, on Toda y on Radio 4 when he

raised the case of Emanuel Gomes, who

died in April 2020. Gomes had worked

at the Ministry of Justice and a post-

mortem recorded hypertensive heart

disease as the official cause of death.