Partygate: report on whether Boris Johnson misled Commons due – UK politics live | Politics

There are not a lot of Tory MPs willing to publicly defend Boris Johnson anymore, but one of them is Sir Michael Fabricant, and on the Today programme he gave an interview suggesting the privileges committee was biased against Johnson.

Asked if he trusted parliament to judge Johnson, Fabricant replied:

I trust parliament but of course I’m not so sure that I trust the privileges committee.

Why do I say that? I actually sat in while Boris Johnson gave evidence. Now, you’ve got to understand that the committee sits in a quasi-judicial role. It’s there to dispassionately make a judgement.

I looked at the members of the committee. Some of them behaved in a totally proper way. Others were pulling faces, were looking heavenwards, were indicating they didn’t agree with what Boris was saying. You know, I was quite shocked actually by the behaviour of some of the members of the privileges committee.

On the subject of bias, Fabricant was then asked by the presenter, Nick Robinson, if he thought there was a link between his willingness to repeatedly defend Johnson and the fact that Johnson ensured he got a knighthood in the resignation honours published last week. Fabricant said he thought this topic would come up. But, in his reply, he implied that the knighthood was nothing to do with his pro-Johnson media appearances.

He told Robinson:

You know, I’ve served the people of Lichfield for 31 years. I’ve been on the government or opposition front benches for about nine years. I helped save, when there was an issue over tax the National Memorial Arboretum. I helped move HS2 from going by a housing estate. A number of people have said that they are surprised it took so long.

Rishi Sunak was on visit in Harrow this morning, where he witnessed an immigration raid. Asked about the privileges committee report into Boris Johnson, he said he had not seen it yet and that it would not be right to comment.

Asked if he would give an interview later, after he had had time to read it, Sunak replied:

You are talking about a report that I haven’t seen and that no one else has seen. It wouldn’t be right to comment on it in advance of it coming out and being published.

These are matters for the House of Commons, and parliament will deal with it in the normal way that it does.

The reference to parliament dealing with this report “in the normal way that it does” suggests that ITV’s Robert Peston was right yesterday when he said that the government will table a motion asking the Commons to approve the privileges committee report, and that a plan to instead have a debate on a motion just saying the Commons has noted the report has been dropped.

Sunak was also asked if he was “frustrated” by Johnson’s interventions in the past week. He replied:

No, I’m just getting on with delivering for the country.

Good morning. In a post on his Substack blog last year Dominic Cummings, who was Boris Johnson’s chief adviser in No 10 and the strategist who did as much as anyone to help him win the 2019 general election, before he resigned and devoted his efforts to bringing Johnson down, wrote this about Johnson’s relationship with the truth.

He rewrites reality in his mind afresh according to the moment’s demands. He lies – so blatantly, so naturally, so regularly – that there is no real distinction possible with him, as there is with normal people, between truth and lies. He always tells people what they want to hear and he never means it. He always says: ‘I can’t remember’ when they remind him and is rarely ‘lying’.

Johnson misled MPs when he told them that the Covid rules and guidelines were followed in No 10 at all times. But last year, as the Partygate scandal was engulfing his administration and before he stood down, the Commons voted to get the privileges committee to conduct an investigation into whether he had done this deliberately (ie, lied), or at least recklessly. Today we will get its report.

Advance stories suggest the verdict will be grim. Yesterday the Times said the privileges committee would conclude that Johnson “deliberately misled parliament over the Downing Street parties scandal”. This morning the Financial Times says it will say he “committed ‘multiple’ contempts of parliament”. We’ll be able to read it for ourselves very soon, because it is due out at about 9am.

Because of the role he played in Brexit (many people think the leave campaign would have lost if he had not not leading it), Johnson has been one of the most consequential prime ministers of the modern era. Today’s report will significantly shape how he is remembered.

As Aubrey Allegretti reports, last night Johnson launched a fierce attack on one of the committee’s Tory members, accusing him in effect of hypocrisy.

Today we will be focusing almost exclusively on the report, and reaction to it. It is due out soon and later, during business questions in the Commons after 10.30am, Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons, is expected to give details of when MPs will debate the report.

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