Harwich MP says PM could have avoided proceedings over 'partygate'

Mr Johnson swore “hand on heart, I did not lie to the House” as he was questioned by MPs over whether he misled the Commons with his denials about partygate in a hearing that could determine his political fate.

Harriet Harman, chairwoman of the Privileges Committee undertaking the grilling, rejected the former prime minister’s demand that the inquiry only considers his discussion of coronavirus guidance.

Mr Johnson said if it was so “obvious” that rule-breaking was going on in No 10, as the committee argues, then it would also have been “obvious” to others, including Rishi Sunak.

If Mr Johnson fails to convince the committee that he did not deliberately mislead the Commons, he could be found to have committed a contempt of Parliament.

The full House of Commons would vote on any recommendations.

Sir Bernard Jenkin suggested Boris Johnson could have avoided the contempt proceedings if he had given a fuller account to Parliament.

The former prime minister said: “Why I believed, when I stood up on December 1, that the guidance was followed completely at all times in No 10, what picture I had in my head – and why that doesn’t conflict with that picture (of Lee Cain’s leaving-do) – the answer is that I knew from my direct personal experience that we were doing a huge event to stop the spread of Covid within the building.

“We had sanitisers, windows were kept open, we had people working outdoors wherever they could, we had Zoom meetings, we had restrictions on the number of people in rooms, we had Perspex screens between desks and – above all – we had testing, regular testing, which went way beyond what the guidance described, and which, in my view, helped mitigate the difficulties we had in maintaining perfect social distancing.”

After Mr Johnson explained the Covid measures in place at No 10, Sir Bernard said: “If you said all that at the time to the House of Commons, we probably wouldn’t be sitting here. But you didn’t.”