Privilege: Conduct of Right Hon. Boris Johnson

Debate between John Hayes and Maria Eagle

Monday 19th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

In my 26 or so years in the House, I have never read a report from the Privileges Committee that has been so damning and excoriating. Nor have I read one that has been so carefully prepared over such a long time by Members from across the House who have clearly taken the obligations placed on them by the House with great seriousness in difficult circumstances.

We in this House all owe the right hon. and hon. Members on the Privileges Committee, who conducted the work to produce the report that we are considering, an extensive debt of gratitude—I am not the only person to say so, but I think it bears repetition. It matters to us all, no matter which party we are in; whether we are Back Benchers, Ministers or hope to be Ministers; whether we were Ministers for a few weeks and perhaps hope to be again; or whether we intend to remain Back Benchers, intend to stand down, or end up getting defeated at a future general election. It matters to everybody in this House that the privileges of this House are properly upheld. If they are not, our representative democracy cannot properly function, as the beginning of the report’s conclusion makes perfectly clear. I agree very much that this matters.

Those who take the view that we are now considering a trivial punishment given that Mr Johnson has left could not be more wrong. It is important that the House, which established and asked the Committee to do the report, considers the findings and votes as it wishes to. I hope that every Member votes in favour of the Committee’s findings and recommendations.

There have been ample opportunities for those who object fundamentally to the way in which the report has been produced to have an influence on it. The motion was amendable, but it has not been amended. As other right hon. and hon. Members have said, there have been opportunities throughout the process, which has taken over a year, to have an impact on the Committee’s membership, on the terms of reference, and on the work that it has been asked to do.

The Committee has done what we asked it to do, and its findings are quite shocking. The report sets out egregious behaviour by the former Prime Minister, amounting to multiple contempts of Parliament. We must draw a line in the sand to stop Ministers thinking that they can lie to Parliament. Whether they are the most junior Under-Secretary or the Prime Minister, they cannot go to the Dispatch Box and deliberately lie. If they do, they must be punished for it by this House. If they do it and get away with it, as is the way with liars, they think they can do it again.

Mr Johnson appeared to think that one should lie repeatedly and lie big, but if we do what I believe we should tonight and support the report of the Privileges Committee, he will have been stopped in his tracks and dealt with for the lying that he did at that Dispatch Box. That can only be good for our democracy. That is why every Member of this House who is present should vote in favour of the report.

I commend those Conservative Members—particularly those in the Government—who are here and have made it clear that they will support the report. I had rather hoped to see the Prime Minister and far more of the Cabinet here, because it should matter to them as much as it matters to Opposition Members. Some day in the future, when they are in opposition—I think that will happen—they will want to know, just as much as any other Member of the House, that they are being told the truth from that Dispatch Box. It is a shame that the Prime Minister does not seem to be here. It does not send the right signal—it does not show that the House takes the matter seriously enough—if some parts of it decide on a party political basis that for party management reasons it is easier to run away and hide. That is a shame.

The debates we have been having about “knowingly” are legally esoteric, but the Committee found that Mr Johnson had deliberately misled the House—that takes knowledge aforethought; to be deliberately doing something, one has to be aware that one is doing it—that he deliberately misled the Committee; that he breached the confidence of the Committee when he did not like the findings that he was shown in the report, which he got to see before the Committee had finalised it and before it was published; that he impugned the Committee, thereby undermining the democratic process of the House; and that he was complicit in the campaign of abuse and attempted intimidation of the Committee.

This has gone on over an extended period. The Committee found that there were five times when Mr Johnson misled the House: first,

“when he said that Guidance was followed completely in No. 10, that the Rules and Guidance were followed at all times, that events in No. 10 were within the Rules and Guidance, and that the Rules and Guidance had been followed at all times when he was present”;

secondly, when

“he failed to tell the House about his own knowledge of the gatherings where rules or guidance had been broken,”

even though he was there and he could have said what he saw; and, thirdly, when

“he said that he relied on repeated assurances that the rules had not been broken.”

The Committee stated:

“The assurances he received were not accurately represented by him to the House”.

The final two times were when Mr Johnson

“gave the impression that there needed to be an investigation by Sue Gray before he could answer questions when he had personal knowledge that he did not reveal,”

and

“when he purported to correct the record but instead continued to mislead the House and, by his continuing denials,”

the Committee.

It is pretty clear, and the evidence can all be read. The Committee stated that Mr Johnson was being

“deliberately disingenuous when he tried to reinterpret his statements to the House to avoid their plain meaning and reframe the clear impression that he intended to give, namely when he advanced unsustainable interpretations of the Rules and Guidance to advance the argument that the lack of social distancing at gatherings was permissible within the exceptions…and when he advanced legally impermissible reasons to justify the gatherings.”

It is pretty clear from the report that this was not an inadvertent or occasional slight slip, but a pattern of behaviour.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Maria Eagle]

The right hon. Gentleman has only just come in, but I give way.

[Sir John Hayes]

I heard several of the speeches prior to the right hon. Lady’s, but I am grateful to her for giving way none the less.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) made the point about the difference between being deliberate and being knowing, but I will not dwell on that. Will the right hon. Lady comment on the sanction? It seems to me that she is right that the privileges of this House matter, and that the way the privileges are managed matters too, but one might have expected the Privileges Committee to have some kind of sentencing guidelines, if I can put it in those terms. One might have expected the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), who chaired the Committee, given that she has been here since I was in full-time education, to have insisted on that at the beginning.

[Maria Eagle]

It is entirely a matter for the Committee what sanction it proposes. It seems pretty clear from what it has said that the proposed sanction was increased following the further contempt that occurred when the draft report was sent to Mr Johnson, because of the way he behaved in leaking the report. I am not on the Committee, so I do not know what proposals were being considered before that further contempt, but I do not think 90 days is unreasonable, given the extensive period of time, the number of contempts, and the way he behaved having been confronted with his behaviour.

By the way, I think that the sanction concerning the former Member’s pass is important too. People might think it trivial, but it sends a signal of extreme disapproval and indicates that, if a former Member decides to behave in this manner, that will not be allowed with impunity. I think that is entirely reasonable.

I do not wish to go through any more of the details. This is an egregious example—one of the worst I have seen. The Committee members have done the House a service. The truth starts here, at that Dispatch Box. It must be observed. If we do not have that, we do not have a functioning parliamentary democracy. That is why every Member of this House must, in my view, vote this evening to support the Committee and to approve its report.