After a year-long investigation, a committee of British lawmakers said Thursday that former UK prime minister Boris Johnson deliberately misled Parliament about the lockdown-flouting parties that undermined his credibility and contributed to his downfall. The report is the latest development in the “partygate” scandal since local news organisations reported that members of Johnson’s staff held a series of parties in 2020 and 2021 when such gatherings were banned due to pandemic restrictions. In his response, Johnson called the report, a “political assassination” and rejected the conclusions as a “load of complete tripe”.
The House of Commons Privileges Committee, in its report, stated that Johnson’s actions and his response to the committee were such a flagrant violation of the rules that they warranted a 90-day suspension from Parliament, news agency Associated Press reported.
Condemning the former UK prime minister’s conduct, the report and its recommendation are largely symbolic as Johnson angrily quit as a lawmaker last week after the committee informed him of its conclusions.
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“We have concluded above that in deliberately misleading the House, Mr Johnson committed a serious contempt,″ the committee’s report stated, as quoted by the AP.
“The contempt was all the more serious because it was committed by the Prime Minister, the most senior member of the government. There is no precedent for a Prime Minister having been found to have deliberately misled the House,″ the damning report read.
The committee also recommended that Johnson should not be granted a pass to Parliament’s grounds.
In a furious response, Johnson, 58, fought back describing the committee as a “kangaroo court” that conducted a “witch hunt” to drive him out of Parliament.
A majority of the panel’s seven members come from Johnson’s Conservative Party.
“The committee now says that I deliberately misled the House, and at the moment I spoke I was consciously concealing from the House my knowledge of illicit events,” Johnson said, as quoted by AP. “This is rubbish. It is a lie. In order to reach this deranged conclusion, the Committee is obliged to say a series of things that are patently absurd, or contradicted by the facts,” he remarked in his statement.
As per news agency AFP, Boris Johnson also called parliamentary probe verdict a “political assassination”.
According to the BBC, the report also slammed Boris Johnson’s resignation statement contending that he breached confidentiality requirements by criticising the committee’s provisional findings
The full House of Commons will now debate the committee’s report and decide whether it concurs with the panel’s findings and recommended sanctions.
Johnson’s move to quit Parliament last week meant he could not be suspended, and his seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip will be contested in a special election in July.
He and his wife, Carrie, were fined by the Metropolitan Police last year for breaching COVID-19 laws at a birthday party for Johnson in June 2020 in his Downing Street residence and office.
Incumbent UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was among dozens of people who were issued with fixed-penalty notices for a series of office parties and “wine time Fridays” in 2020 and 2021 across government buildings.
Disclosures of the booze-fuelled gatherings angered many Britons as these parties took place at a time when millions were prohibited from seeing loved ones or even attending family funerals. The “partygate” scandal added to a string of controversies that propelled Johnson’s downfall.
He resigned as prime minister in July 2022 after a mass exodus of government officials protesting his leadership.
The former UK prime minister acknowledged misleading lawmakers but maintained that no rules had been broken and insisted he didn’t do so deliberately.
In March, he told the UK House committee he “honestly believed” the five gatherings he attended, including a send-off for a staffer and his own surprise birthday party, were “lawful work gatherings” that aimed to boost morale among overworked staff members coping with a deadly pandemic.
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