June 15 (UPI) — A parliamentary panel concluded Thursday that former Prime Minister Boris Johnson intentionally misled the House of Commons when he told it there had been no lockdown parties in Downing Street.
After a year-long investigation, the final report of the Privileges Committee said the incident constituted a serious contempt of Parliament and further that he had tried to undermine the investigation and was “complicit in a campaign of abuse and intimidation of the committee.”
“We have concluded above that in deliberately misleading the House Mr. Johnson committed a serious contempt. The contempt was all the more serious because it was committed by the prime minister, the most senior member of the government,” the report states.
“There is no precedent for a prime minister having been found to have deliberately misled the House. He misled the House on an issue of the greatest importance to the House and to the public, and did so repeatedly.”
Made up of four Conservative MPs, two from Labor and one from the SNP, the panel found Johnson committed further contempt when he publicly criticized the committee calling it a “kangaroo court” after it shared its findings with him last week, prior to winding up its investigation.
Johnson misled the House on five counts ranging from telling it that COVID-19 rules and guidelines were followed at all times in No. 10 and that all gatherings were within the rules — whether he was present or not — to inappropriate use of assurances of advisers as proof of compliance and failing to make the House aware that he knew about gatherings where rules had been broken.
“We came to the view that some of Mr. Johnson’s denials and explanations were so disingenuous that they were by their very nature deliberate attempts to mislead the Committee and the House, while others demonstrated deliberation because of the frequency with which he closed his mind to the truth,” the report stated.
“For these reasons we conclude that Mr. Johnson’s conduct was deliberate and that he has committed a serious contempt of the House.”
Johnson was “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” the committee said.
These included unsustainable interpretations of the Rules and Guidance to advance the argument that the lack of social distancing was permissible within the exceptions which allowed for gatherings and advancing legally impermissible reasons to justify gatherings.
The committee recommended Johnson be suspended from parliament for 90 days for “repeated contempts” and “undermining the democratic process of the house.” A suspension of this length normally triggers the recall of an MP and a by-election in their constituency if 10,000 people sign a petition.
But the sanction is academic because Johnson resigned from his seat as the MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip on Friday.
However, the committee recommended that Johnson should be denied the pass usually granted to former lawmakers that entitles them to entry to the Parliamentary Estate.
Johnson insists he never intentionally misled Parliament and that the committee’s purpose was always to find him guilty “regardless of the facts” and the whole investigation was a politically motivated campaign orchestrated by his enemies to destroy him as revenge for Brexit.