Boris Johnson posted a nearly 1,700-word scathing statement on the Privilege Committee's report to partygate, calling the findings » insane” and “deserves disrespect.”
The committee’s report was released on Thursday following a 14-month investigation.
Read Boris Johnson’s full statement:
It's been months since people started to warn me about the intentions of the Privilege Committee. They told me it was a kangaroo court. They told me that he was ruthlessly promoted by Harriet Harman's political agenda and supplied him with distorted legal advice for the sole political purpose of convicting me and expelling me from Parliament.
They also warned me that most of the members had already expressed prejudiced views, especially Harriet Harman, in a way that would not be tolerated in a normal legal process. Some alarmists even pointed out that a majority of the Committee members had voted to stay and emphasized that Bernard Jenkin's personal antipathy towards me was historical and well-known.
To be honest, when I first heard these warnings, I was incredulous. When it was first proposed that this committee conduct such an inquiry, I thought it was just a procedural trick on the part of the Labor Party that wasted time.
I never thought for a minute that a committee of deputies could be put forward against me the facts and I didn't see how any reasonable person could not understand what happened.
I knew exactly what events I attended at number 10. I knew what I saw with my own eyes, and, like the current Prime Minister, I considered these events legal. I considered my participation legitimate and necessary for the job; and this is indeed the result of an exhaustive police investigation.
The only exception is the event on June 19, 2020, the so-called birthday party, when me and the then Chancellor Rishi Sunak were fined under circumstances that I still call bewilderment (I had lunch at my desk with people I worked with every day).
So when I told the House of Commons on 1 December 2021 that «the guidance has been fully followed» (in number ten), that's exactly what I meant. It wasn't just what I thought: it's what we all thought — that we followed the rules and followed the guidelines completely — despite the difficulty of maintaining social distancing at all times.
Now the committee says I deliberately introduced The Chamber is misleading, and at the moment when I spoke, I deliberately withheld my knowledge of illegal events from the Chamber.
This is nonsense. It's a lie. In order to come to this insane conclusion, the Committee is forced to say a number of things that are blatantly absurd or contradict the facts.
First, they say that I must have known that the farewell events I attended were not sanctioned workplace events because — wait — NO SUCH EVENT could legally take place anywhere in this country, according to the Committee's interpretation of the covid rules. This is clearly wrong. I correctly assumed that these events were reasonably necessary for operational purposes. We have dealt with the pandemic. We had hundreds of employees busy sometimes around the clock fighting covid. Their fighting spirit mattered in this fight. It was important for me to thank them.
But don't just listen to me. Take this from the Metropolitan Police. The police were investigating my role in all these events. In no case did they recognize what I had done as illegal. First of all, it did not occur to me — when I spoke in the House of Commons — that the events were illegal.
I believed that we were working, and we: talked mostly about nothing but work, mostly covid. Why did I have to hide my knowledge of something illegal in the Chamber, if this report could be so easily refuted by others? Why did we have an official photographer if we thought we were breaking the law?
We didn't believe that what we were doing was wrong, and after a year of work, the Privilege Committee found no evidence that we did it.
Their argument can be summarized as follows: “Look at this picture — it's Boris Johnson with a glass in his hand. He should have known that the event was illegal. So he lied.”
This is complete nonsense. In this photo, I was at my workplace trying to cheer and thank my officials in a way that I felt was crucial to the government and the country as a whole, and in a way that I felt was completely within the rules. .
Now the Committee is saying that all such events — «thanks» and birthdays — were inherently illegal, ridiculous, contrary to the intentions of those who made the rules (including myself), and contrary to the conclusions of the Met; and, above all, I did not for a moment think that they were illegal — at the time or when I spoke in the House of Commons.
The committee cannot believe the findings of its own report because it has now emerged that Sir Bernard Jenkin attended at least one «birthday», December 8, 2020 — his wife Anne's birthday — when alcohol and food were allegedly served. and there were over six in the room.
Why was it illegal for me to thank the staff while Sir Bernard was allowed to attend his wife's birthday party?
Hypocrisy is a rank. Like Harriet Harman, he should have withdrawn from the investigation as he is clearly in conflict.
The rest of the Committee's report is basically a rehash of their previous inconsistencies. They have nothing really new to say. They admit that they found no evidence that I was warned before or after the event that it was illegal. This is certainly very revealing. If we sincerely considered these events to be unauthorized — with all the political subtleties that entails — then there would be some trace in all the thousands of messages sent to me and to which the committee had access.
It is ridiculous to say, as the Committee does, that people were too scared to report problems to their superiors. Really? Was Simon Case too scared to bring his concerns to my attention? Was it Sue Gray or Rishi Sunak?
Committee acknowledges that management allows social distancing of less than 1m where there was no alternative, although they refuse to take into account all other mitigation measures, including regular testing . which we implement.
They deliberately miss the point. The question is not whether perfect social distancing has always been maintained in room ten — obviously it was not possible, as I have often said. The question is, did I believe, given the limitations of the building, that we were doing enough, with allowances made, to follow directions—and I believed, and so did everyone else.
They reluctantly agree that I was right in telling the Commons that I was repeatedly assured that the rules were being followed regarding the December 18 event in the press room, but they are trying to absurdly and incoherently claim that the assurances of Jack Doyle and James Slack was not enough to constitute «repeated» assurances — completely and deliberately ignoring the sworn testimony of two MPs, Andrew Griffiths and Sarah Dines, who also said they had heard such assurances being given to me.
Perhaps the craziest claim of all is the Mystic Mag Committee's claim that I saw the December 18th event with my own eyes. They say, without any evidence, that at 9:58 pm, the day I went up to the apartment, my eyes slid into the media room for one crucial second — and that I saw what I recognized as an unsanctioned event taking place. .
Firstly, the Committee completely ignored the general evidence of that evening, namely that people were working all the time, even if some were drinking at their tables. How do these clairvoyants know exactly what happened at 21.58?
How do they know what I saw? What kind of retinal prints did they somehow find that were completely inaccessible to me? I didn't see any activity at all in the press room, nothing illegal, as far as I remember.
As the Committee learned, officials were actively involved in preparing complex «No» forward looking statements. -Brexit deal and Christmas quarantine.
The desperation of the Committee is that they are incompetently and absurdly trying to link me to an illegal event — with an argument so hackneyed that it belongs to one of the Bernards of Jenkin's Nudist Colonies.
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Their argument is that I saw this event, considered it illegal, and kept it in my head when I spoke to the House of Representatives. On all three counts, they speak from the back of their heads. If I saw an illegal event and registered it as illegal, then why was I alone in this? Why not the cabinet secretary, or Sue Gray, or the then chancellor, who were patrolling the same corridors at the time?
The Committee credits me and me alone with secret knowledge of illegal events that has somehow not been shared by any other official or minister in Number Ten. It's absolutely incredible. This is a trick.
This report is a charade. I was mistaken in trusting the Committee or its good faith. The terrible truth is that it was not I who twisted the truth for my own purposes. This is Harriet Harman and her committee.
This is a terrible day for deputies and for democracy. This decision means that no Member of Parliament is exempt from vendetta or expulsion on trumped-up charges by a tiny minority who want him or her to leave the House of Commons.
I have not the slightest contempt for Parliament, or for the important work that the Privilege Committee has to do.
But for the Privilege Committee to use its prerogatives in such an anti-democratic way to achieve what should have been the final stab in a prolonged political assassination, it is unworthy of contempt.
It is up to the people of this country to decide who sits in Parliament, not Harriet Harman.
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