Page:Fifth Report - Matter referred on 21 April 2022 (conduct of Rt Hon Boris Johnson).pdf/6

 1. had knowledge of the Covid Rules and Guidance

2. had knowledge of breaches of the Rules and Guidance that occurred in No. 10.

3. misled the House: 1. when he said that Guidance was followed completely in No. 10, that the Rules and Guidance were followed at all times, that events in No. 10 were within the Rules and Guidance, and that the Rules and Guidance had been followed at all times when he was present at gatherings

2. when he failed to tell the House about his own knowledge of the gatherings where rules or guidance had been broken

3. when he said that he relied on repeated assurances that the rules had not been broken. The assurances he received were not accurately represented by him to the House, nor were they appropriate to be cited to the House as an authoritative indication of No. 10’s compliance with Covid restrictions

4. when he gave the impression that there needed to be an investigation by Sue Gray before he could answer questions when he had personal knowledge that he did not reveal.

5. when he purported to correct the record but instead continued to mislead the House and, by his continuing denials, this Committee

4. was deliberately disingenuous when he tried to reinterpret his statements to the House to avoid their plain meaning and reframe the clear impression that he intended to give, namely 1. when he advanced unsustainable interpretations of the Rules and Guidance to advance the argument that the lack of social distancing at gatherings was permissible within the exceptions which allowed for gatherings, and

2. when he advanced legally impermissible reasons to justify the gatherings.

7. We took written evidence, submitted with statements of truth, from witnesses present at the relevant times, to inform us of what Mr Johnson would have known at the time of his statements to the House. We heard oral evidence under oath from Mr Johnson. In response to Mr Johnson’s proposed reliance on material that was not supported by a statement of truth, we ourselves obtained further evidence on his behalf. We relied only on first-hand evidence and not on hearsay. We considered evidence supplied by the Government, including emails, WhatsApp messages and photographs. We received a limited number of WhatsApp messages from Mr Johnson. We paid a visit to No. 10 to inspect for ourselves the locations of the various gatherings to which Mr Johnson referred in the House. We considered all of the evidence that we received and came to conclusions about the facts.

8. We took into account facts which are not in dispute because they are matters of public record, for example: