Johnson, 58, fought back in a statement tinged by fury. He described the committee as a “kangaroo court” that conducted a “witch hunt” to drive him out of Parliament. A majority of the panel’s seven members come from Johnson’s Conservative Party.
“The committee now says that I deliberately misled the House, and at the moment I spoke I was consciously concealing from the House my knowledge of illicit events,” Johnson said. “This is rubbish. It is a lie. In order to reach this deranged conclusion, the committee is obliged to say a series of things that are patently absurd, or contradicted by the facts.”
The report is just the latest episode in the “partygate” scandal that has distracted MPs since local news organisations revealed that members of Johnson’s staff held a series of parties in 2020 and 2021 when such gatherings were prohibited by pandemic restrictions. The full House of Commons will now debate the committee’s report and decide whether it concurs with the panel’s findings and recommended sanctions.
This week, the eve of the report’s publication, Johnson also called for the panel’s most senior Conservative member, Bernard Jenkin, to resign over claims that he had broken pandemic restrictions himself.
Daisy Cooper, deputy leader of the opposition Liberal Democrats, said the move was a “typical distraction tactic from Boris Johnson that doesn’t change the fact he broke the law and lied about it”.
Johnson’s move to quit Parliament means he can no longer be suspended, and his seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip will be contested in a special election next month.
Johnson and his wife, Carrie, were fined by the Metropolitan Police last year for breaching Covid-19 laws at a birthday party for Johnson in June 2020 in his Downing St residence and office.
Current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was also among dozens of people issued with fixed-penalty notices for a series of office parties and “wine time Fridays” in 2020 and 2021 across government buildings.
Revelations of the boozy gatherings, which took place when millions were prohibited from seeing loved ones or even attending family funerals, angered many Britons and added to a string of ethics scandals that spelled Johnson’s downfall. Johnson resigned as Prime Minister in July 2022 after a mass exodus of government officials protesting his leadership.
Johnson has acknowledged misleading MPs when he assured them no rules had been broken, but he insisted he didn’t do so deliberately.
In March he told the committee he “honestly believed” the five gatherings he attended, including a send-off for a staffer and his own surprise birthday party, were “lawful work gatherings” intended to boost morale among overworked staff members coping with a deadly pandemic.