And here we all are at last. The 30,000-word diatribe which will make for a shredder's field day in Westminster next week has finally been published. If nothing else it will make for a lovely supply of toilet paper for some others.
I will try to keep this brief.
The intention of my piece is not to convince you whether Boris Johnson lied or not. I suspect many people made up their mind on that 18 months ago when these allegations first emerged. The intention of this piece is to highlight some of the more extreme excrescences from the report, some of the incredibly bizarre conclusions and suggestions, and - most importantly - why I believe MPs should reject the recommendations when it comes to a vote on Monday.
The first thing to note is that "illegal" does not appear in the report once. "Unlawful" appears four times - twice in direct quotes from Boris Johnson. This report, clearly, was written by a lawyer. This looks like it was a deliberate attempt to avoid being transparently in conflict with the Met Police's investigation; the rest of the report does do so, but since it does not outwardly use those terms it suggests the editors got their digital red pens in order before publishing. (Notably, they didn't do this with an earlier evidence bundle and accidentally leaked a bunch of confidential email addresses by mistake. I can corroborate this because I happened to notice that myself before it was taken down.)
It is important to note the only thing Boris Johnson was ever penalised for by the Metropolitan Police (and Rishi Sunak, for that matter) was a surprise birthday celebration, which, in the eyes of many, is the least egregious "event" that occurred, so for this to be the one event where Johnson's attendance was unlawful - in his words - "boggled my mind".
In any case, as I have said before, this is not about trying to convince you about him lying to the House or otherwise. But it is an important pretext.
Where I have concerns are as follows:
1. Criticism of criticism
The Owen Paterson affair, whereby MPs voted against the Standards Committee's recommendation to suspend Owen Paterson for lobbying offences, should have led to reform of the Standards and Privileges Committees. It didn't. Once a matter is referred by the House to the Committee(s) they are given a blank cheque to do as they see fit, it seems. MPs have no way to express concerns about how the Committee conducts itself, the manner in which they are operating, the line of questioning taken in oral evidence - anything. They get a motion to accept the report or otherwise.
"from the outset of this inquiry there has been a sustained attempt, seemingly co-ordinated, to undermine the Committee’s credibility and, more worryingly, that of those Members serving on it. The Committee is concerned that if these behaviours go unchallenged, it will be impossible for the House to establish such a Committee to conduct sensitive and important inquiries in the future. [...] We will be making a Special Report separately to the House dealing with these matters."
This suggests that criticism of how the Committee has operated is to be censured, and I think that is fundamentally wrong. A Select Committee cannot be prosecutor, judge, and jury with a blank cheque as they currently are. MPs who have expressed concerns about the committee throughout the process - on all sides - must be allowed to be heard.
2. Does the Punishment fit the Crime?
The committee recommend (essentially) that Boris Johnson be banned from Westminster and he ought to have been suspended for 90 days. That's three times as long as Margaret Ferrier deliberately breaking Covid rules to board a train. That's nearly twice as long as Rob Roberts's sexual offences. I'm not sure lying - however serious - can be considered worse than sex offences, but yet the two SNP MPs on the committee wanted Boris Johnson expelled - EXPELLED! - from Parliament for life. If that is not a witch-hunt, I simply don't know what is.
So let us consider the "crime". The crime is, allegedly, that he lied to the House, in the view of the committee. That's all. He didn't murder anyone. He didn't deliberately infect anyone with Covid. He didn't rape anyone. He didn't make unwanted sexual advances on junior staffers. No, he said some words which (the Committee believes) were deliberately untrue.
If you believe that merits permanent expulsion from the House and sexual offences don't, then I simply think you should give your head a wobble.
3. The suggestion that we shouldn't have "waited for Sue Gray"
One of the weirdest conclusions in the report is the suggestion that Boris Johnson should not have told MPs to wait for the Gray Report, and should have prejudiced it:
"Mr Johnson [...] misled the House [...] when he gave the impression that there needed to be an investigation by Sue Gray before he could answer questions."
Frankly, I am baffled by this conclusion. To preclude the result of a Cabinet Office inquiry, much of which was subject to Police investigations, would have been sub judice. A little bit of insider trading here, but the Speaker of the House, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, has been extremely careful on the matter of sub judice topics. Indeed, even today I received an email (as a listed member of staff) from the Table Office looking to query about a question my boss has tabled, cautioning him not to refer to ongoing Police investigations and matters. (I am not the Parliamentary Assistant, so I have no idea what said question is.)
I am sure of it Boris Johnson was advised not to comment on an ongoing investigation, not just by his lawyers, but likely by the Police and Sue Gray herself. The Committee's suggestion that therefore saying "wait for Sue Gray" was misleading the House is truly, truly bizarre.
4. The suggestion that Boris Johnson lied to the Committee
This is an incredibly serious allegation. To lie under oath is a criminal offence in a court of law. However, no evidence is presented in the report to this extent. The entire extent of the suggestion he lied to the Committee is that when he said he was "repeatedly" assured, they wanted, er, a more accurate and specific definition of what "repeatedly" meant, and thus they have selectively chosen to define it in a way not consistent with the dictionary.
If I were an MP I would not accept this report for these specific reasons.
