the times | Wednesday May 25 2022 2GM 11News
Sadiq Khan has used his powers as
London mayor to demand that the
Metropolitan Police explain its
decisions over the parties scandal.
Khan invoked a policing protocol
yesterday that compels the Met to give
him information about why Boris
Johnson avoided being fined despite
attending a lockdown-breaking party.
The mayor has also requested that
the force give an explanation in public
to maintain trust and confidence. Khan
can force the Met to release a statement
if it is reluctant or he can publish the
explanation himself.
A row between the force and City
Hall broke out after Khan said trans-
parency was essential for the integrity
of the inquiry.
The Met has come under increased
pressure to explain why Johnson was
not fined for attending a leaving party
during the November 2020 lockdown
when social gatherings were banned.
Leaked photographs showed the
prime minister giving a toast in front of
a table with bottles of wine and gin.
Others at the event were fined. The Met
has not given detail on its rationale for
how it issued the fixed-penalty notices.
After Khan said in a radio interview
more information was needed or public
trust would be damaged, the Met insist-
ed it would not issue anything further.
Khan then invoked his powers under
the policing protocol order. He wrote to
Sir Stephen House, the acting commis-
sioner of the force, asking for details of
how the officers in Operation Hillman
reached their decisions.
The order requires the force to notify
and brief Khan on “any matter or
investigation” on which House may
need to provide “public assurance”. The
mayor said the Met should go public
and reassure Londoners, warning that
trust in the police was being “further
eroded by this lack of clarity”.
Khan’s spokeswoman said: “The
mayor has been clear he cannot and
would not intervene in operational
decisions, however, with the
investigation now complete, he hasAn ITV journalist who first reported a
photograph of Boris Johnson at a lock-
down party has rebuked conspiracy
theorists after a Tory MP hinted that
the image was linked to his husband.
Paul Brand, the UK editor of ITV
News, denied that any of his family
were the source for his series of agenda-
setting stories about pandemic rule-
breaking in No 10. The journalist said
he has been subjected to homophobic
abuse and “disinformation” by internet
trolls who have pinned the leaks on his
husband, Joe Cuddeford, a civil servant.
Cuddeford works for the Geospatial
Commission, a government body that
uses location data to investigate eco-
nomic and social opportunities. It is
part of the Cabinet Office, whose
second permanent secretary, Sue Gray,
is heading an investigation into gather-
ings in Whitehall during the pandemic.
Since Brand obtained a video showingReporter’s husband ‘isn’t the leaker’
Downing Street staff joking about a
Christmas party during lockdown last
year, social media trolls have repeated-
ly targeted his husband.
After the reporter published a story
on Monday showing Johnson raising a
glass at a gathering in November 2020,
anonymous Twitter accounts speculat-
ed about whether Cuddeford was one of
the 83 people fined over parties.
Mark Jenkinson, a Tory MP, replied
to a Twitter user with a blank avatar
who had questioned if it was a “coinci-
dence” that Brand “keeps landing ex-
clusive leaks”, given his husband’s role.
The MP for Workington wrote: “It must
be a coincidence, because he’s a deputy
director in the Cabinet Office and the
investigation was carried out by
the...oh.”
On Twitter yesterday Brand ad-
dressed the “pretty wild stuff” being
written about his family and stated that
his husband did not receive a fixed-pen-
alty notice and had not attended anyparties. He wrote: “I haven’t tweeted so
far as it’s never great to engage with
conspiracy theories etc. But it’s all got a
bit OTT lately, so to be clear nobody in
my family is my ‘source’, attended any
parties or was fined.”
He added: “It’s been an education in
how disinformation spreads. Inevitably
it became pretty homophobic and grim
so in order to protect the people I love
I felt I had to tweet this.”
Jenkinson said he has “never been in-
volved in any conspiracy theories about
Paul Brand” and that he was not imply-
ing the journalist’s husband was in-
volved. The MP said his comment was
“innocuous” and that Brand should not
be subjected to abuse, while adding it
was a “fair bet that some of the leaked
stuff came from the Cabinet Office”.
Brand is not understood to have been
aware of the comments made by Jen-
kinson before making his Twitter post
and was instead responding to the
wider abuse levied against him.Mario LedwithNews
grabbed a glass himself, say staff
Khan urges Met
to explain fines
Fiona Hamilton Crime Editor made this request in accordance with
the Policing Protocol Order.”
House is expected to face questions
when he appears at the London Assem-
bly tomorrow. The dispute comes as
public confidence in the force is ebbing.
Johnson paid a fine for a birthday
celebration in June 2020 but was told
that he would face no further action
over five other gatherings he attended.
He is understood to have said he re-
garded one event as a work meeting
because it was a farewell to an employ-
ee. Allies said he attended for less than
ten minutes but others claimed he
stayed for up to 25 minutes.
Senior policing leaders told The
Times that the failure to explain the
Met’s rationale risked further reputa-
tional damage, leaving it vulnerable to
allegations that it tried to protect a
senior politician. One said the force
needed to shed its bunker mentality
and engage properly with the public.
“They have zero self-awareness and
need a new approach to transparency,”
the insider said. “They are in a bunker
and are asking for shovels not ropes.”
Sir Peter Fahy, the former chief con-
stable of Greater Manchester Police,
said the Met did not need to explain the
minutiae of its decision making. If the
mayor had concerns he could set up an
independent inquiry, he added.
Daisy Cooper, the Liberal Democrat
deputy leader, sent a letter to the Inde-
pendent Office for Police Conduct
(IOPC) urging it to investigate the Met’s
handling of the scandal. Cooper said the
refusal to outline the basis on which it
reached its decisions gave the impress-
ion there was “one rule for the prime
minister and another for everyone else”.
The IOPC sent her letter to the Met
for consideration. A spokeswoman said:
“The legal framework when we receive
direct complaints requires us to send
the complaint to the relevant police
force. We have advised the complainant
that we have sent the complaint to the
Metropolitan Police service and have
asked the force to confirm to us how it
intends to handle it.”
The prime minister has been treated
at Downing Street parties has emerged just before Sue Gray’s report on lockdown gatherings is published this morning favourably, letters, page 30DANIEL LEAL/AFP/GETTY IMAGESsecret meeting with Gray
dal and “enjoying the limelight a little
too much”.
Pictures appeared on the Guido
Fawkes website showing Gray standing
alongside Baroness Jowell, a former
Labour cabinet minister who died of
brain cancer in 2018. A friend of Gray’s
suggested it was “trying to make out
that she’s a Labour person”.
“It is insane for Downing Street to be
trying to discredit her and it is going to
backfire,” said a source. “She is going to
be a key witness before the privileges
committee investigation so, strategical-
ly, to go to war with her is completely
stupid.”
Whereas select committee evidence
sessions are typically held in public, the
privileges committee and the standards
committee sometimes take evidence in
private. The source said that the com-
mittee’s members were likely to be sen-
sitive that a live televised hearing with
Gray would become a “spectacle”, but
that even if it were held behind closeddoors a transcript of her evidence
would be published.
The privileges committee has seven
members: four Conservatives, two La-
bour MPs and one from the Scottish
National Party. The Labour chairman,
Chris Bryant, has recused himself from
the inquiry and the party wants to re-
place him on the committee with a
senior figure such as Harriet Harman,
the former leader of the Commons.
Three of the four Conservatives on
the committee also hold positions as
parliamentary private secretaries, or
junior government aides. Laura Farris,
a PPS at the Foreign Office, said on
Sunday that she had decided to quit her
government role in order to avoid any
perception that she was conflicted
while investigating the prime minister.
Andy Carter, a member of the privi-
leges committee and a PPS at the De-
partment for Work and Pensions, has
also decided to resign his government
role, The Times understands.