Boris Johnson is accused by the inquiry committee of deliberately misleading the British Parliament on Partygate

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson ‘deliberately misled’ the House of Commons about Partygateparties at the Downing Street residence during the pandemic, according to a parliamentary committee.

The Privileges Commission opened its own investigation into the scandal in June 2022, which has already led to reprimands from both the police and an independent government-commissioned report that found Johnson and his team had broken existing law.

This new audit focused specifically on the versions Johnson offered to parliament, to determine whether he had misled MPs, even unwittingly. The commission, headed by Labour’s Harriet Harman, concluded not only that he was not telling the truth, but that he did so deliberately, which Johnson himself has always denied, according to the BBC.

“We concluded that when you told the House and this committee that the rules and guidelines were being followed, your own knowledge was such that you deliberately misled the House and this committee,” the Privileges Committee said in today’s report. of Commons, which has been investigating Partygate for more than a year.

The report also suggests removing the former Conservative leader from the House of Commons for three months, although the findings come days after the former prime minister resigned as deputy, a step he took after receiving the first drafts.

On his way out, Johnson lashed out at the committee, calling it biased and accusing it of only wanting to kick it out of the House of Commons. Now, the group led by Harman also finds that he engaged in “intimidation” in an attempt to defend himself.

Johnson, who was in charge of the government between July 2019 and September 2022, announced last Friday that he was leaving his post as deputy for the English constituency of Uxbridge & South Ruislip with immediate effect, given that the committee had “made it clear ” in a letter preparing to expel him from the House of Commons.

critics

As soon as he heard the title of the report, the former British prime minister called it “garbage” and called it a “terrible day” for democracy. “The commission says that I deliberately misled the House of Representatives and that when I spoke, I knowingly hid from the House of Representatives my knowledge of wrongdoing. That’s garbage. That’s a lie. “In order to reach this crazy conclusion, the committee is forced to say a number of things that are absurd or inconsistent with the facts,” Johnson said.

In a statement, the former head of the conservative government, who announced his resignation on Friday, believes that today is a “terrible day for representatives and democracy” and assures that no parliamentarian is “safe from revenge».