UK committee rules ex-PM Boris Johnson deliberately misled parliament

Former U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson intentionally misled parliament over illegal Covid-19 lockdown parties held during his tenure, a parliamentary committee said Thursday, describing it as a “serious contempt.”

The damning verdict of the privilege committee’s long-awaited “partygate” report found that Johnson had willfully deceived parliament several times when probed about Downing Street parties that occurred on his watch and broke his own lockdown rules.

“We conclude that in deliberately misleading the House, Mr Johnson committed a serious contempt,” the findings of the cross-party committee showed.

“There is no such thing as a precedent for a Prime Minister having been found to have deliberately misled the House,” it added.

The 100-page report, which investigated six gatherings held on the prime minister’s official residence on the time of the U.K.’s most stringent Covid restrictions, also concluded that Johnson was complicit in a “campaign of abuse and attempted intimidation” to disguise the circumstances of those events.

The committee, which consists of members of each the ruling Conservative Party and opposition Labour Party, really helpful that Johnson shouldn’t be entitled to a former Member’s pass, which allows MPs to access parliament.

It also said that, if Johnson were still a member of parliament, he must be suspended from the House for 90 days. Johnson resigned as a Conservative MP last week after seeing a complicated copy of the report. On the time, he accused the cross-party committee of behaving like a “kangaroo court” conducting a “political hit job” against him.

In an additional statement Thursday, he dubbed the findings “rubbish,” “absurd” and “deranged,” in keeping with Perspective magazine and the Telegraph. The ex-prime minister, a fervent Brexiteer, also accused the committee of “prejudicial views,” saying that a majority of members “voted remain” within the 2016 Brexit vote.

“The committee now says that I deliberately misled the House, and in the meanwhile I spoke I used to be consciously concealing from the House my knowledge of illicit events,” he wrote.

“That is rubbish. It’s a lie. With a view to reach this deranged conclusion, the committee is obliged to say a series of things which can be patently absurd, or contradicted by the actual fact.”

MPs answerable for producing the report described Johnson’s comments as a blow against the U.K.’s democratic institutions.

“This attack on a committee carrying out its remit from the democratically elected House itself amounts to an attack on our democratic institutions,” the committee said.

The privilege committee’s findings shall be discussed by MPs on Monday, leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt said.

The report follows an earlier police investigation into Downing Street’s lockdown parties, which resulted in fines for each Johnson and current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Revelations of Johnson’s involvement in rule-breaking parties was just one in every of several scandals to beset his premiership and ultimately result in his resignation last July. Nonetheless, his flouting of public health measures was seen as particularly jarring at a time when Britons were distancing from family members to forestall the spread of the coronavirus.

Speaking on the committee’s findings, the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK group said it was “one other grim reminder” of how Johnson broke his own rules “so he could have a celebration and amusing” while other families “were saying goodbye to family members over Zoom.”