Partygate inquiry: Boris Johnson to face MPs’ questions next week in public

Published

2 years ago

March 14, 2023

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Boris Johnson will be questioned by MPs next Wednesday as part of the partygate investigation into whether he misled parliament when he was prime minister.

Mr Johnson has accepted the Privileges Committee’s invitation to give oral evidence to them from 2pm on 22 March, the committee said.

The session will be held in public and Mr Johnson will face questions from the committee of four Tory MPs, two Labour – including chair Harriet Harman – and one SNP MP.

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His appearance will come two and a half weeks after the committee released a preliminary report after they were tasked with investigating whether Mr Johnson misled parliament over partygate allegations.

He claimed the interim report showed he was being “vindicated” and it is “clear from this report that I have not committed any contempt of parliament”.

But the report said the Commons may have been misled by the former PM multiple times.

Mr Johnson repeatedly denied COVID lockdown rules were broken at Number 10 when asked in the Commons, but the report said evidence strongly suggests it would have been “obvious” to him rules were being breached.

The former PM had requested the evidence before he appeared in front of the committee to provide his own oral evidence.

He has been invited to provide written evidence ahead of next Wednesday’s session as well, with any response to be published.

If Mr Johnson is found to have misled parliament he could be suspended from the Commons for 10 days, which could trigger a recall petition.

If 10% of voters in his Uxbridge constituency sign a petition he could lose his job as an MP as a by-election would have to take place – although he could run in it.

On 3 March, the committee published the evidence it has obtained so far in its initial 24-page report, including four previously unseen photos of Downing Street gatherings awash with bottles of alcohol.

It said the Commons may have been misled multiple times, which would be contempt of parliament.

The report said: “The evidence strongly suggests that breaches of guidance would have been obvious to Mr Johnson at the time he was at the gatherings.

“There is evidence that those who were advising Mr Johnson about what to say to the press and in the House were themselves struggling to contend that some gatherings were within the rules.”

The committee also laid out in the preliminary report what it will ask Mr Johnson when he appears in front of them.

It will consider why Mr Johnson told MPs no guidance had been broken “when he knew what the guidance was and was in attendance at gatherings where the guidance was breached”.

And it will also look into “why he failed to tell the House about the gatherings at which he had been present”.

The committee emphasised the report is not the final assessment, but “sets out next steps”.

The committee said last month it has experienced delays due to Mr Johnson’s government after written evidence it provided in August was “heavily redacted” before Rishi Sunak’s government provided unredacted material in November.

In January, the committee wrote to 23 people seeking specific information and it is after assessing those responses it raised the issues set out in the preliminary report.

Mr Johnson said after the interim report that not all the evidence in the report has come “from people on my side”.

He accused the committee of relying on evidence “culled and orchestrated” by civil servant Sue Gray, who led an inquiry into whether parties took place in Downing Street during lockdown.

Mr Johnson said the committee has emphasised their “wish to be fair” but has referenced the Second Permanent Secretary to the Cabinet Office on “no fewer than 26 occasions” in the report.

“That is, of course, Sue Gray,” he said.

The committee said the report is not based on Ms Gray’s report, she is not a witness and was not present when material from Downing Street and witnesses was presented to them.

World

The fight for the Arctic – where climate change is giving Russia room to manoeuvre

Published

6 hours ago

May 29, 2025

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The fight for the Arctic - where climate change is giving Russia room to manoeuvre

The twin threats of climate change and Russian malign activity in the Arctic must be taken “deadly seriously,” David Lammy has warned.

Sky News joined him on the furthest reaching tour of the Arctic by a British foreign secretary.

We travelled to Svalbard – a Norwegian archipelago that is the most northern settled land on Earth, 400 miles from the North Pole.

It is at the heart of an Arctic region facing growing geopolitical tension and feeling the brunt of climate change.

Mr Lammy told us the geopolitics of the region must be taken “deadly seriously” due to climate change and “the threats we’re seeing from Russia”.

We witnessed the direct impact of climate change along Svalbard’s coastline and inland waterways. There is less ice, we were told, compared to the past.

The melting ice is opening up the Arctic and allowing Russia more freedom to manoeuvre.

“We do see Russia’s shadow fleet using these waters,” Mr Lammy said. “We do see increased activity from submarines with nuclear capability under our waters and we do see hybrid sabotage of undersea cables at this time.”

In Tromso, further south, the foreign secretary was briefed by Norwegian military commanders.

Vice Admiral Rune Andersen, the Chief of Norwegian Joint Headquarters, told Sky News the Russian threat was explicit.

“Russia has stated that they are in confrontation with the West and are utilising a lot of hybrid methods to undermine Western security,” he said.

But it’s not just Vladimir Putin they’re worried about. Norwegian observers are concerned by US president Donald Trump’s strange relationship with the Russian leader too.

Karsten Friis, a Norwegian defence and security analyst, told Sky News: “If he’s too soft on Putin, if he is kind of normalising relations with Russia, I wouldn’t be surprised.

“I would expect Russia to push us, to test us, to push borders, to see what we can do as Europeans.”

Changes in the Arctic mean new challenges for the NATO military alliance – including stepping up activity to deter threats, most of all from Russia.

In Iceland, we toured a NATO airbase with the foreign secretary.

There, he said maintaining robust presence in the Arctic was essential for western security.

“Let’s be clear, in this challenging geopolitical moment the high north and the Arctic is a heavily contested arena and we should be under no doubt that NATO and the UK need to protect it for our own national security.”

This is also about distracting Russia, drawing away resources that could have been used in the war in Ukraine and deterring it in the future.

Because the more Arctic opens up, the more this once pristine wilderness is becoming the arena of national rivalry and potentially conflict.

World

‘What did they do to be burned and bombed?’: Charity calls on UK to offer Gaza children life-saving treatment

Published

12 hours ago

May 29, 2025

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'What did they do to be burned and bombed?': Charity calls on UK to offer Gaza children life-saving treatment

A British charity has written to the prime minister and foreign secretary, urging them to allow seriously ill children from Gaza into the UK to receive life-saving medical treatment.

Warning: This article contains images readers may find distressing

The co-founder of Project Pure Hope told Sky News it was way past the time for words.

“Now, we need action,” Omar Dinn said.

He’s identified two children inside Gaza who urgently need help and is appealing to the UK government to issue visas as a matter of urgency.

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Britain has taken only two patients from Gaza for medical treatment in 20 months of Israeli bombardment.

“Most of the people affected by this catastrophe that’s unfolding in Gaza are children,” he continued. “And children are the most vulnerable.

“They have nothing to do with the politics, and we really just need to see them for what they are.

“They are children, just like my children, just like everybody’s children in this country – and we have the ability to help them.”

Sky News has been sent video blogs from British surgeons working in Gaza right now which show the conditions and difficulties they’re working under.

They prepare for potential immediate evacuation whilst facing long lists, mainly of children, needing life-saving emergency treatment day after day.

Dr Victoria Rose told us: “Every time I come, I say it’s really bad, but this is on a completely different scale now. It’s mass casualties. It’s utter carnage.

“We are incapable of getting through this volume. We don’t have the personnel. We don’t have the medical supplies. And we really don’t have the facilities.

“We are the last standing hospital in the south of Gaza. We really are on our knees now.”

One of her patients is three-year-old Hatem, who was badly burned when an Israeli airstrike hit the family apartment.

His pregnant mother and father were both killed, leaving him an orphan. He has 35 percent burns on his small body.

“It’s a massive burn for a little guy like this,” Dr Rose says. “He’s so adorable. His eyelids are burnt. His hands are burnt. His feet are burnt.”

Hatem’s grandfather barely leaves his hospital bedside. Hatem Senior told us: “What did these children do wrong to suffer such injuries? To be burned and bombed? We ask God to grant them healing.”

The second child identified by the charity is Karam, who, aged one, is trying to survive in a tent in deeply unhygienic surroundings with a protruding intestine.

He’s suffering from a birth defect called Hirschsprung disease, which could be easily operated on with the right skills and equipment – unavailable to him in Gaza right now.

Karam’s mother Manal told our Gaza camera crew: “No matter how much I describe how much my son is suffering, I wouldn’t be able to describe it enough. I swear I am constantly crying.”

Children are among the bulk of casualties – some 16,000 have been killed, according to the latest figures from local health officials – and make up the majority of those being operated on, according to the British surgical team on the ground.