No comment on Downing Street parties, says MP

JOHN HOWELL has refused to comment on the initial findings of an investigation into illegal parties at 10 Downing Street.

The Henley MP said it was too early to comment due to the ongoing Met Police investigation into the parties held during the
pandemic, which follows call for his predecessor Boris Johnson to resign as Prime Minister. Mr Howell said: “The process is a very long one and I am not going to comment on it as it goes along.”

Last month, he told the Henley Standard that he was grateful for the honest comments by constituents on what was a difficult issue and reiterated that he didn’t vote for Mr Johnson to be prime minister at the Tory leadership vote in 2019.

On Monday, senior civil servant Sue Gray published her initial findings into parties held in and around Mr Johnson’s home in Downing Street and Whitehall during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Prime Minister said an updated version of the report would be published once the police have finished their investigation.

The initial findings point to “failures of leadership and judgement” and excessive drinking at work against the backdrop of the pandemic.

Ms Gray said 16 events fell within her investigation’s remit and 12 of those are now being investigated by the police.

The events took place over a dozen dates between May 2020 and April last year in 10 Downing Street or the Cabinet Office, apart from one in the Department for Education.

Ms Gray said some events should not have been allowed to take place and others should not have been allowed to develop as they did and that some of them represented a “serious failure to observe” standards for government and those expected of the public at the time.

She also said that “some of the behaviour surrounding these gatherings is difficult to justify” and that there was an excessive consumption of alcohol that was “not appropriate in a professional workplace at any time”.

Ms Gray was asked by the Met to leave out details of parties which are the subject of its investigation.

Mr Johnson told a packed House of Commons that he was “very, very sorry for misjudgements that may have been made by me or anybody else in Number 10 and the Cabinet Office” but said no conclusions should be drawn from the fact that the police are investigating.

Politicians on all sides have expressed anger and dismay at Johnson’s leadership but the Prime Minister has refused to stand down.

Meanwhile, Green Party councillors on South Oxfordshire District Council have asked Mr Howell to make his position clear on the scandal. Group leader Robin Bennett said: “Boris Johnson’s desperate and shameful attempts to cling on to power are making a mockery of our democracy.

“Anything less than a clear call for his resignation from John Howell is to fail his constituents.

“It is not enough for Mr Howell to say that he understands people’s anger, while hiding behind the Sue Gray report and refusing to take action.”

“Boris Johnson’s flagrant disregard for the rules is not only damaging trust in public health measures but also our country’s international credibility and it is paralysing government while issues affecting us all, such as the cost of living crisis and potential war in Ukraine, spiral out of control.

“For the good of the country, Johnson must go and I find it deeply worrying that Mr Howell appears to be placing misguided party loyalty ahead of the interests of the people of South Oxfordshire.”

Jo Robb, a green councillor who represents Woodcote and Rotherfield on the council, said: “We should be under no illusion that just getting rid of Boris Johnson will fix the culture of hypocrisy and entitlement that has taken hold in our political system.

“Whoever is our next prime minister should be subject to rigorous scrutiny, and be held to the basic principles that we are all expected to follow when given the privilege of elected office.

“They should not, like Boris Johnson and his colleagues seem happy to do, lie to the public and to other MPs.”

Former prime minister Theresa May, the MP for Maidenhead, said she was “angry” at the partygate revelations. In a letter to her constituents, she said that “nobody is above the law”.

Speaking in the House of Commons on Monday, she said: “What the Gray report does show is that No. 10 Downing Street was not observing the regulations they had imposed on members of the public.

“So either my right honorable friend had not read the rules, did not understand what they meant and nor did others around him, or they didn’t think the rules applied to No. 10. Which was it?”

Mr Johnson rejected the question, insisting the Gray report did not come to that conclusion and called on Mrs May to wait for the full report to be published.