Just a short post from me to highlight that the Partygate Report has now been published and is available here: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5803/cmselect/cmprivi/564/summary.html
In some ways the report is not a surprise. Boris Johnson resigned as an MP on Friday having seen a draft of the report and therefore previewing that the jig was finally up.
On the other hand it is somewhat surprising to see how little the report actually holds back when it details the actions of Boris Johnson. The Privileges Committee was asked to investigate whether Johnson misled the House of Commons and it could have simply concluded that he did, his actions amounted to contempt and then left it at that.
Instead the report deliberately and specifically engages with the criticism surrounding the committee itself and the role Johnson played in maligning its work.
From a legal perspective the most interesting thing is the time spent knocking down the opinion of one of the country’s leading barristers, Lord Pannick KC. Annex I is set out in a Q&A format where questions about the committee and its process posed by Johnson, his supporters, and legal counsel are addressed directly. These include:
Is the Committee ‘Labour-dominated’?
Has the Committee been on ‘fishing expeditions’?
Why was Mr Johnson’s counsel not allowed to address the Committee?
Perhaps the most devastating comment for Pannick is however reserved for a footnote earlier on in the report where the Privileges Committee:
“note in particular that a great many of Mr Johnson’s counsel’s arguments are based on fallacious analogies between the inquisitorial parliamentary process and the quite separate adversarial process which is followed in the courts.”
Reading the conclusions of the report it is clear that Johnson’s attempts to discredit the committee have created only more of a rod for his own back.
On its own the contempt of Parliament would have warranted a 10-day suspension and triggered a recall petition.
Instead the further contempts in the form of attacks on the committee alongside the decision to breach confidentiality before the report was published warranted a recommendation for a much more serious punishment such that:
“if Mr Johnson were still a Member he should be suspended from the service of the House for 90 days for repeated contempts and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process…We recommend that he should not be entitled to a former Member’s pass”.
The recommendations now move to Parliament who will be asked to vote on the report and any sanctions.
Johnson will spend much of today trying to get ahead of the curve by talking to the media so that his former colleague take mercy on him. The comprehensive work of the committee means that will be a difficult task for the former prime minister.
How does the invincible sovereignty of the prime minister and his supporters transfer to the invincible sovereignty of the committee and it's supporters.