Health News at Your Fingertips

Here’s a round up of the key developments of the day:

• New photos have emerged of Boris Johnson raising a glass of wine in front of a table strewn with bottles at the leaving do of a senior aide – an event for which the Metropolitan police decided not to issue the prime minister with a fixed-penalty notice (FPN). Others who attended the leaving do were handed FPNs during the Met’s investigation, and the images will raise new questions about why Johnson escaped sanction. The pictures were obtained by ITV News.
• Questions are being raised about whether the photos prove Johnson lied at the dispatch box. On 8 December last year the Labour MP Catherine West specifically asked Boris Johnson at PMQs if there was a party in Downing Street on 13 November [2020]. Johnson replied: “No, but I am sure that whatever happened, the guidance was followed and the rules were followed at all times.”
• Labour says the new photographs prove beyond doubt that Boris Johnson lied to MPs. This is from Angela Rayner, the party’s deputy leader: “While the British public were making huge sacrifices, Boris Johnson was breaking the law.”
• The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has been urged to investigate why Boris Johnson was not fined for the event at which he was pictured apparently raising a toast and drinking sparkling wine. The Lib Dem deputy leader, Daisy Cooper, has written to IOPC director general Michael Lockwood about the issue.
• No 10 has played down the significance of the new Partygate photographs, arguing that the Met police had access to photographs when it carried out its investigation.
• Lord Brian Paddick, a former Metropolitan police deputy assistant commissioner, has told Andrew Marr that the Met “didn’t want to upset” No 10 over Partygate and has compared the situation to the phone hacking scandal.
• The former leader of the Scottish Conservatives Ruth Davidson said it was clear Boris Johnson had lied to parliament and that his position was untenable.
• The Met’s decision-making process during the Operation Hillman inquiry into events in No 10 and Whitehall has been questioned by lawyers, with the Good Law Project’s Jolyon Maugham suggesting he would take legal action.
• Simon Clarke, the chief secretary to the Treasury, said publication of the Sue Gray report was being held up by a debate about who to name, and whether photographs would be included. He said the “extraordinary pressure” that No 10 staff were under during the pandemic helped to explain why the Partygate lockdown breaches happened.
• The PM’s spokesperson admitted that Downing Street instigated the meeting between Boris Johnson and Sue Gray that took place a few weeks ago. This came after Simon Clarke wrongly claimed earlier in the day that Gray had been the one to instigate it.
• Boris Johnson “pressurised Sue Gray to drop” her report into Partygate during a secret meeting earlier this month, The Times is reporting. A source told the paper that the prime minister asked if there was “much point” of publishing the report given that “it’s all out there”.
• Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser who is now determined to be his nemesis, posted about Partygate on his subscription-only Substack account this morning. He correctly predicted that pictures would start to emerge. Among other things, he said Johnson attended a second birthday party in 2020, as well as the one for which he was fined, that has not been reported.
• Johnson said that he was not “intrinsically” in favour of new taxes, but that a windfall tax was not off the table. Asked about the increasing clamour (particularly within his own party) for a windfall tax, he replied: “I’m not attracted, intrinsically, to new taxes. But as I have said throughout, we have got to do what we can – and we will – to look after people.”
• Simon Clarke rejected claims that Rishi Sunak’s wealth meant he was not suited to be chancellor when asked about the revelation that Sunak’s family is now on the Sunday Times rich list, and that he is three times as wealthy as Ed Sheeran.
• Jacob Rees-Mogg, the minister for Brexit opportunities and government efficiency, may be anxious to get workers back into the office, but a large number of Britons like working from home, figures from the Office for National Statistics out this morning suggest. They show that almost a quarter of employees now describe themselves as hybrid workers – working partly in the office, and partly at home.
• Boris Johnson has been urged by a Commons committee to issue 11 corrections relating to occasions when he falsely claimed employment is higher now than it was before the pandemic.

That’s it for tonight. Thanks so much for joining us today. Our Ukraine liveblog is still going. You can follow along here:

Tory MP Peter Bone has said on Newsnight that Boris Johnson and the Met police believe the party was not in fact a party but a work event.

Bone said:

I think we can all agree it was a work event.

Boris Johnson “pressurised Sue Gray to drop” her report into Partygate during a secret meeting earlier this month, The Times is reporting.

A source told the paper that the prime minister asked if there was “much point” in publishing the report given that “it’s all out there”.

On Monday Downing Street was forced to confirm that the meeting between Johnson and Gray, the civil servant leading an inquiry into Partygate, was instigated by No 10 and not Gray, contradicting the account of a senior minister.

Dan Hodges of the Mail on Sunday points out that Boris Johnson will have to explain how he could have not realised he was at a party when he was surrounded by people drinking alcohol.

Full story: Latest Boris Johnson photos bring Partygate scandal back into focus

Peter Walker

Over the almost six months of Partygate, the same narrative has played out repeatedly: just as Boris Johnson seems to have put the saga behind him, new images emerge to refocus everyone’s minds, with a corrosive effect on the prime minister’s image and ratings.

Last Thursday when the Metropolitan police inquiry formally closed with just one fine for Johnson, Conservative MPs were exchanging admiring – or in some cases exasperated – messages about how the “greased piglet” had slipped free yet again.

There was still the full report to come from the senior civil servant Sue Gray. But supporters of the prime minister were clear – a single fine for a brief appearance at an impromptu birthday celebration did not merit a leadership challenge. Time to move on.

The Daily Mail headline on Friday shouted: “What a farcical waste of time and £460,000.”

Just three days on, photos showing Johnson in a packed room raising his glass and making a speech during the leaving drinks of the former communications chief Lee Cain on 13 November 2020 make the prime minister’s life difficult again in several interconnected ways.

Even after Gray submits her report, Johnson faces an inquiry by a committee of MPs into whether he misled the Commons when he said he knew nothing about social gatherings – an offence which, if demonstrated, would normally lead to resignation.

The photos notably weaken Johnson’s defence, not least given a parliamentary exchange from last December in which the prime minister, when asked by the Labour MP Catherine West about events on the date in question, insisted “the rules were followed at all times”.

More widely, photos and other images seem to resonate with voters in a way that even repeated descriptions of suitcases of alcohol being wheeled into No 10, and Wilfred Johnson’s swing broken by drunken revellers, do not.

Read more here:

A spokesperson for London mayor Sadiq Khan said the final report of Sue Gray – the senior civil servant investigating lockdown violations in Whitehall – must be published in full.

The spokesperson said:

The mayor has always been clear that nobody is above the law and that those who broke the rules, at a time the public were being asked to make huge sacrifices, must be held accountable for their actions.

The mayor understands why Londoners are seeking clarity given these latest revelations. The details of the investigation are a matter for the Met Police and it would be wrong for the mayor – who oversees the Met as police and crime commissioner for London – to intervene in an inquiry investigating his political opponents.

Here’s a reminder of what some people who followed the rules lost out on while Boris Johnson was photographed drinking sparkling wine:

The Tory MP Sir Roger Gale told Times Radio “there is one answer” when a prime minister misleads parliament from the despatch box.

He said:

It’s absolutely clear that there was a party, that he attended it, that he was raising a toast to glass one of his colleagues.

And therefore, he misled us from the despatch box. And, honourably, there is one answer.

He also said:

We have to have somebody at the helm that we can really rely on, and whose word we can rely on. That doesn’t appear to me to be Mr Johnson.

Paul Brand of ITV News has called Gale’s comments the “first demand for a resignation from Tory MPs over latest Partygate pics”.

The Met’s decision-making process during Operation Hillman inquiry into events in No 10 and Whitehall has been questioned by lawyers, with the Good Law Project’s Jolyon Maugham suggesting he would take legal action.

He said:

We have now had advice from our QC and junior.

We will be sending a further judicial review pre-action protocol letter to the Met in relation to the apparent failures in its investigation into the Prime Minister later this week.

Adam Wagner, a barrister and the author of a forthcoming book on the coronavirus laws, said that at the time of the November 13 event “it was illegal to ‘participate’ in a gathering if that gathering was not reasonably necessary for work”.

He said:

Others got FPNs for this gathering so assume police considered it was illegal Why not the PM?

He added it is “impossible to understand how attending, raising a glass and making a speech wouldn’t be ‘participating”’.

Meanwhile, the police watchdog has been urged to investigate Scotland Yard’s handling of the partygate investigation

Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper writing to Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) calling for them to examine the Met’s Operation Hillman inquiry.

However, the IOPC is unlikely to agree to her request as most complaints should be directed to the force responsible, with the watchdog usually only considering the most serious cases, such as those involving a death or serious injury following contact with the police, PA News reports.

Cooper’s request could also be ineligible because complaints can only be made by someone who has directly witnessed an incident or is directly affected by it.

The former leader of the Scottish Conservatives Ruth Davidson said it was clear Boris Johnson had lied to parliament and that his position was untenable.

She told Channel 4 News:

There is now photographic evidence that when the prime minister stood up in parliament and was asked directly was there a party in No 10 on this date and he replied ‘no’, he lied to parliament.

I don’t think his job is tenable and his position is tenable. The office of prime minister should be above being traduced by the person who holds it.