Senior members of Boris Johnson’s team are alleged to have put pressure on the civil servant to remove certain details and names from her report into coronavirus rule-breaking, with the 15 people finally named in the document only half the number initially told they would feature, according to the Sunday Times.
A Whitehall source told the paper: “On Tuesday night, one last attempt was made to persuade her to omit names from the report, but she made it plain to them the only way that was going to happen was if they issued her with an instruction.”
It was also alleged that Mr Johnson’s chief-of-staff Steve Barclay “tweaked” details about the party in the PM’s flat on the eve of publication.
But Cabinet Office sources rejected claims the report was edited due to pressure, while a No 10 source denied all allegations, saying: “It is untrue that anyone on the political side saw anything in advance or sought to influence it.”
Obviously, denials from BJ’s No 10 cannot be believed, so, seemingly, Sue Gray’s report WAS interfered with … and that can only be at the insistence of the man with his pants on fire, Boris Johnson, the “tinpot despot” …
It may be “as a result of this report” but the report is the topic not a Tory leadership battle which, in fact, may be as a result of a Tory confidence vote in BJ or as a result of being BJ found guilty of lying to parliament by the House of Commons Privileges Committee.
And where’s the proof of the not so independent Independents allegations.
From what I’ve heard Sue Gray wrote to all the people who were going to be mentioned in the report and unless they could give a good reason for them not to be published the names were going to be published. So I would say that the people whose names don’t appear have given a reasonable enough reason to Sue Gray for them not to be published.
These are the changes and the reasons and they all seem fair enough to me:
And these two seem to have hit the headlines:
The Prime Minister may also ask the Independent Adviser for advice on the appropriate sanctions in the event that a breach of the Code is determined to have occurred. As both Lord Geidt and the Committee on Standards in Public Life have recommended last year, it is disproportionate to expect that any breach, however minor, should lead automatically to resignation or dismissal. The sanction which the Prime Minister may decide to issue in a given case is for the Prime Minister to determine, but could include requiring some form of public apology, remedial action or removal of ministerial salary for a period. The Ministerial Code has been updated to reflect this.
The Government is also mindful of the need to avoid incentives for trivial or vexatious complaints which may be made for partisan reasons. Such complaints can undermine public confidence in standards in public life rather than strengthen it. The Government must also balance the broader considerations of unelected ‘standards’ processes seeking to remove from office those who hold a political and democratic mandate.
Labour has called for an investigation into leaked text messages suggesting there was a second gathering in Boris Johnson’s Downing Street flat during lockdown, held by his wife, Carrie, on his birthday.
The emergence of new evidence of an event hosted on 19 June 2020, which was not mentioned in the Partygate report by Sue Gray, sparked accusations of a cover-up and calls for No 10 to “come clean”.
It was alleged that a Downing Street aide received a text from Johnson’s wife confirming that she was with two male friends in the flat, where the prime minister later joined them.
The gathering came hours after the birthday celebration held in the cabinet room, for which both Johnsons were fined by police. It is thought to be separate to a third event on Johnson’s birthday with his relatives, which took place in the Downing Street garden and is thought to have adhered to the rules at the time.
Three senior civil servants lobbied Sue Gray not to publish some names of those attending lockdown parties, it was claimed today.
In response, the Whitehall enforcer, who was assembling her Partygate probe report, allegedly told them to “instruct” her to make the changes – signalling publicly that she opposed them, the Sunday Times reported.
The aides were named by the paper as permanent secretary Samantha Jones, Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, and Alex Chisholm, the permanent secretary in the Cabinet Office.
It came as Downing Street was hit with fresh claims that an alleged “Abba party” in the No10 flat was removed from the report.
Downing Street admitted an official saw parts of it before publication.
In the end, several people were named in it, however No10 flatly denied reports in the Sunday Times that the document was “changed by No10” in its final stages – a move that would cast doubt over its independence.
A No10 source said: “It is untrue any- one on the political side saw anything in advance or sought to influence it.”
A draft of the report had referred to music being played from Boris and Carrie Johnson’s Downing Street flat on November 13, 2020, new reports claim.
The draft also said what time the gathering finished, it is claimed – with other parties in No10 carrying on as late as 4am. But neither of these details were in the final report.
