Page:Fifth Report - Matter referred on 21 April 2022 (conduct of Rt Hon Boris Johnson).pdf/52

 169. Mr Johnson’s lawyers continued: "The Committee has evidence from Jack Doyle, Andrew Griffith MP and Sarah Dines MP that Mr Johnson was provided with assurances about the event on 18 December 2020 by officials at these meetings. Therefore, irrespective of the identities of those officials, there can be no dispute that (i) assurances were received from Jack Doyle and James Slack; (ii) three witnesses have given evidence that Mr Johnson received assurances in at least one of the PMQ prep meetings; and (iii) Mr Johnson was given assurances by more than one person and on more than one occasion."

Purported assurances: conclusions
170. On 1 December 2021 Mr Johnson asserted in the House, based on the assurances he had received in relation to the event on 18 December 2020, that “all guidance was followed completely in No. 10”. He has subsequently acknowledged that he should have said “rules” rather than “guidance”, and said that he did not correct the record because he did not think the public made any distinction between Rules and Guidance. However, the distinction between Rules (which were legally enforceable) and Guidance (which was not, but which related to important matters not covered by the rules such as social distancing) is important–as Mr Johnson, who had been making almost daily announcements to the nation about the Covid Rules and Guidance, would have been well aware. This was therefore a significant error: Mr Johnson had an opportunity to correct it through one of the means available to Ministers to correct such errors, but he never did so.

171. Had Mr Johnson asserted that “all Rules were followed completely in No. 10” in relation to the 18 December 2020 gathering, that would have been in accord with the “line to take” developed by the No. 10 Director of Communications, Jack Doyle, the previous evening, in response to advance notice of the story about to break in the Daily Mirror. We accept that this line was prepared under pressure of time and that it would probably have been unrealistic in the time available before PMQs on 1 December for the No. 10 staff to make an authoritative assessment of whether the Rules and Guidance had been complied with at the 18 December 2020 gathering. It would however have been open to Mr Johnson to tell the House that he had commissioned, or planned to commission, such an assessment, rather than categorically assert that either the Guidance or the Rules had been followed completely. Mr Johnson did not attend this gathering and therefore claims he was dependent on receiving assurances from others that Rules had been complied with. If, as we have concluded, Mr Johnson was likely to have been aware of the gathering, having personal knowledge of it as he returned to the stairs leading up to his flat a few metres away, then his claim that he was dependent on assurances was misleading and disingenuous to the point of being deliberately misleading.

172. At PMQs on 8 December 2021 Mr Johnson asserted in the House, after referring to the video of No. 10 Press Secretary Allegra Stratton talking about the 18 December 2020 gathering which had appeared on ITV News the previous day, that “I repeat that I have been repeatedly assured since these allegations emerged that there was no party and