Health News at Your Fingertips

In a clip that was released before it aired tonight, one former official said that they were in disbelief when Boris Johnson denied that there were parties. “We’ve been with him this entire time, we knew that the rules had been broken, we knew that these parties happened. It is quite clear that he lied to parliament.”

She mentions regular press office “wine-time Fridays” drinks at 4pm on a Friday.

Another ex-staff member said it was “pretty typical” for the press team to have drinks in the office with a lot of “young sociable people working there … who lived alone.” Through an actor’s voice, he added that it “wasn’t unusual” for the prime minister to be there. “He seemed to be a believer in letting his staff let their hair down a bit. It speaks to his temperament and leadership style, he wants to be liked by everybody.”

The documentary hears that a security guard was laughed at when he tried to stop the party of 30 people who had gathered for former director of communications Lee Cain’s leaving party.

The Panorama documentary on partygate, fronted by BBC’s former political editor Laura Kuenssberg is broadcasting now on BBC Two.

Several figures are set to appear including former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, Conservative MP Caroline Noakes and Labour MP Wes Streeting. Former officials from No 10 will also be interviewed anonymously.

More on former cabinet minister Robert Jenrick’s comments to Andrew Marr on LBC this evening, where he suggested support for people faced by mounting costs will be forthcoming.

Marr asked whether VAT cuts, warm fuel allowances and increases to universal credit were being considered by Sunak and the Treasury.

Jenrick replied: “I think all of those things will be under active consideration now and given the scale of what we’re going to encounter, or many people in society going to encounter, it’s going to have to be an intervention of some significance, but you’ll have to wait days or a couple of weeks. I don’t think it’ll be very long before the chancellor will come back and set out his plans.”

The latest reports about parties in Downing Street include that attendees ended up sat on each other’s laps because of how cramped it was inside the gatherings.

Officials who spoke to BBC’s Panorama programme, due to air at 7pm on BBC Two, said that they would sometimes arrive at work to find bins overflowing with empty bottles. A security guard who tried to stop one party taking place was laughed at.

Insiders inside Whitehall have said that there is an “awful atmosphere” in No 10 and upset after junior officials were fined for events that others, including Boris Johnson, avoided being penalised for.

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has asked the Metropolitan police why Johnson was not fined for attending Lee Cain’s leaving drinks on 13 November 2020, from which photographs have emerged. Others who attended were fined.

After Scotland Yard confirmed last week how many fines had been given out, with the prime minister getting one fixed penalty notice, civil servant Sue Gray is expected to publish her report on Wednesday into parties in Downing Street during lockdown which is thought to be damaging for Johnson’s premiership.

Some Tory MPs, including Tom Tugendhat have declined to back Johnson this afternoon when asked by journalists.

Theresa May’s former chief of staff when she was prime minister, the ex-MP Gavin Barwell, has had this to say about the ongoing revelations about parties in Downing Street.

The Mirror’s Pippa Crerar who has an exclusive this evening on Rishi Sunak paying £10,000 of his own money for a helicopter to a Conservative party dinner in Wales at the weekend.

The chancellor, who is believed to be one of the richest MPs in the House of Commons, flew from Battersea heliport in south London to Newtown in mid-Wales.

The Mirror was told Sunak had a Q&A session with the former Tory leader William Hague.

On LBC, Andrew Marr has spoken to Morgan Wild from Citizens Advice about the cost of living crisis.

He says that it is seeing huge demand for its services as inflation rises and costs increase. Wild urged the chancellor to increase universal credit payments and other benefits.

He said: “We are running up to the limit on what [our] advice can achieve. Food bank referrals are at a record high and energy debt has reached the highest levels ever. More people are coming forward for support than since before the start of the pandemic.

“We are seeing the people at the real sharp end of the crisis, where they are struggling every day to keep a roof over their heads and make sure they are able to put food on the table.”

He added: “The support so far has been welcome but untargeted. The council tax rebate went to a wide group of households.

“We would want future support to be targeted to people who need it the most, through the benefits system. An uprate to universal credit and put direct grants through the legacy system and pension credits, this would help 10 million people who need it most.”

Marr then speaks to former cabinet member Robert Jenrick who says that the treasury is preparing plans to help with rising costs of bills.

Andrew Sparrow

These are from the Telegraph’s Dominic Penna on the mood in the Conservative party ahead of the probable publication of the Sue Gray report tomorrow.

And the Telegraph’s Camilla Turner has posted a thread on Twitter with more about what Tories are saying ahead of the Gray report. It starts here.

That’s all from me for today. My colleague Harry Taylor is now taking over.

In the Commons MPs are debating the second reading of the Northern Ireland Troubles (legacy and reconciliation) bill. The legislation is intended to address the longstanding problem of how to deal with unsolved killings that occurred during the Troubles. Boris Johnson has been under particular pressure from Tory MPs angry about army veterans being investigated in relation to incidents that occurred decades ago.

Last year the government proposed what would have been an effective amnesty in relation to all offences committed during the Troubles. But that plan was widely criticised, and instead the new bill will only grant immunity from prosecution to people who cooperate with a new Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery which will try to establish the truth behind unsolved killings from that period.

In his speech opening the debate Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, defended the plans on the grounds that the current system was not providing answers or justice for people who lost relatives during the Troubles. He said:

Every year that goes by the opportunity to obtain answers for those who lost loved ones in the Troubles diminishes further. We have a responsibility to ensure that children can grow up together, be educated together, and to understand all aspects of our shared past.

The current system is broken. It is delivering neither justice nor information to the vast majority of families. The lengthy, adversarial and complex legal processes do not offer the most effective route to information recovery. Nor do they foster understanding, acknowledgement or reconciliation.

It is arguably cruel to perpetuate false hope whilst presenting no viable alternative to deliver the information that so many families and their survivors seek.

But Peter Kyle, the shadow Northern Ireland secretary, said Labour would be voting against the bill because it equated those who served in the armed forces with terrorists. He explained:

My party will be voting against this bill today because of the equivalence that it gives to people who served in the armed forces to those who committed acts of terror.

For the incredibly low threshold, and remembering that 722 service people lost their lives by acts of terror and the people who committed [that] against our armed forces could get immunity from prosecution with the very lowest of possible thresholds, that is what we will be voting against today.

A former Nato commander has told MPs some statements by cabinet ministers on the Ukraine crisis could be “unhelpful”, PA Media reports. PA says:

Sir James Everard, former deputy supreme allied commander Europe, was appearing before the Commons defence committee.

Asked by Labour MP Derek Twigg how Nato regarded comments by the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, and the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, calling for Russia to be pushed out of the whole of Ukraine, Everard said: “The alliance view would be that it will be between Russia and Ukraine to determine the end state of this crisis and actually the fewer people that make statements that shape that [the better]. Inevitably certain statements can be unhelpful but actually there’s huge admiration for what the British and other nations did before the event.”

Everard said there might be a recognition that such statements were “stirring the loins and all that sort of stuff”.

One of under-rated skills required in political broadcasting is the ability to hurl provocative questions at politicians from a distance, normally as they are entering or leaving No 10. This is not the same as interviewing, when you expect and require answers. It is more akin to heckling and its main function is to provide useable footage of a politician turning to the camera and reacting. It is sounds easy but it isn’t, because unless you can think of suitable question to yell with conviction, you can easily end up sounding like a prat.

For years the master of the art was a BBC producer nicknamed Gobby, who was best know for yelling at people asking them when there were going to resign. But even Gobby at his best would find it hard to match Sam Coates from Sky News, who was on top form this morning when he was doorstepping cabinet. Here is a compilation.

Richard Neal, the US congressman who chairs the powerful ways and means committee, has described the row about the Northern Ireland protocol as a “manufactured” dispute that could be solved with goodwill from the UK.

Neal has been leading a nine-strong delegation from his committee on a protocol fact-finding mission and, after a meeting with the Irish foreign minister, Simon Coveney, he said he and his colleagues had now heard views from Brussels, London and Dublin. He went on:

The protocol dispute seems to me to be a manufactured issue. I have on this delegation people who are experts at trade and they also would confirm that they think these issues on the trade front, if that’s really the dispute, could be ironed out quickly.

So, what we’ve heard so far, clearly from European Union, is they want to find a solution. What we’ve heard from the minister [Simon Coveney], the taoiseach and the president, they want to find a solution. We, the congressional delegation, want to find a solution. So, I think now it’s up to London to help us all find a solution.

Neal is seen as one of the most influential figures on Capitol Hill where Democrats have threatened to block any future UK-US trade deal if the UK were to act in a way that they perceived as likely to undermine the Good Friday agreement.

The British government has argued that it is the protocol itself that is undermining the Good Friday agreement, but this claim has not been widely accepted overseas.