Privilege: Conduct of Right Hon. Boris Johnson

John Baron Excerpts

Monday 19th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

I rise as one who, if there is to be a vote on this motion tonight, will vote in support of the Committee of Privileges, but let me share with the House my sincere hope that there will not be a vote, because there should not be a vote. We should remind ourselves that the Committee was set the task on a Government motion when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister, and that the motion passed through the Commons unopposed. I add my thanks to the Committee’s members for a diligent and, no doubt, at times difficult task, which they carried out at the request of the House.

It is customary for MPs to accept the recommendations of such a report without a vote, but, as I have said, if there is a Division I will vote in support of the report. Its recommendations, unfortunately, chime in many respects with my own view that Boris Johnson knowingly misled Parliament, which is why I withdrew my support from him—the then Prime Minister—in May last year, and asked him in a meeting to retire at that stage with, perhaps, a modicum of grace. Sadly, I continue to believe that he knowingly misled Parliament, as the report has duly concluded.

This debate—and the vote, if there is a vote—is terribly important. It is of the utmost importance that we attach due deliberation to what it represents. Our parliamentary system compares well with others, and is the beating heart of our democracy. A central component of this system depends on Ministers telling the truth at the Dispatch Box. Indeed, the ability of the legislature to question the Executive can be properly executed only if Ministers tell the truth at the Dispatch Box; if they do not, accountability is impossible, and then we are on a very slippery slope.

No party, no individual, no ego, is bigger than Parliament. It is the very system that safeguards our freedoms, and through which we try to create a more prosperous, fairer society, regardless of party. History will be very unkind to anyone who impugns its integrity. Members who are found to have knowingly misled the House bring it, and by extension other Members, into public disrepute, and that does nothing for the dignity and calling of politics. Indeed—and this, perhaps, leads to a further point—if some Members maintain that we as Members cannot regulate ourselves, they are in effect asking for an independent body to do that job. The thought of unelected officials regulating the conduct of elected Members of this House should concern every parliamentarian, and that is why I think that, in many respects, today is a good day. As it should be, our Parliamentary system itself is putting right a wrong—or certainly I hope it will be doing so.

As we all know, the reason the rule-breaking in Downing Street during the pandemic resonated so strongly with the public is that the rest of us went through real pain during the lockdowns, at the instigation and compulsion of the then Prime Minister. I for one could not say goodbye to my beloved mother as she lay in hospital and passed away, because we were abiding by the rules, and I know that many, many people had similar experiences. To find that unlawful gatherings were taking place at the heart of government was bad enough, but that has been compounded by the failure of the then Prime Minister to be truthful to the House. It is simply not acceptable, and I know that those in this Chamber will find it to be unacceptable later this evening. Agreeing with the report’s recommendations is thus, in my view, an essential step in restoring standards in public life and to restoring the centrality of truthfulness to our parliamentary system.

Finally, I say to my Conservative colleagues that the last year or so that we have spent deliberating on the various aspects of partygate has served as a massive distraction from the otherwise good work that we have been doing on many fronts. It is time to put this to bed, and agreeing the report is the best way of doing that.