A government contract to provide Boris Johnson with taxpayer-funded legal advice during the MPs’ Party gate inquiry has been extended again. The probe, commissioned by the Commons last year, is set to examine whether the former prime minister misled Parliament over the scandal. The latest version of the contract was due to end on Tuesday but has now been renewed until 30 April. Hearings for the investigation are expected to begin in the coming weeks.
The inquiry by the Commons Privileges Committee was launched last April after opposition parties accused Mr. Johnson of misleading MPs about what he knew about gatherings in government buildings held during Covid lockdowns. Questions have been raised about the taxpayer support for Mr Johnson during the inquiry. However, the government argues the contract is justified because it relates to Mr Johnson’s conduct when he was still a minister. Official documents show the contract began last August, when Mr Johnson was still in Downing Street, with an original value of £129,700. In December, the contract was extended until 28 February, with its value increasing by £92,300 to a total of £222,000. That total value remains unchanged under the latest two-month extension, according to procurement records.
The top civil servant at the Cabinet Office, the department that signed off the spending, has not ruled out that the final cost could be higher. “We hope that we will not need to spend more than that,” he told MPs last month. “We need to defer to the work of the committee itself and it will determine the conduct, how long it goes on for and so on.” The contract “went through full scrutiny from all the relevant people – commercial, legal and propriety,” he added.
The committee’s inquiry will determine whether Mr Johnson committed a “contempt of Parliament” by misleading MPs in his Commons statements about Party gate. In September, a legal opinion produced under the contract criticised the committee’s approach, after it decided it would not have to prove he deliberately misled MPs to show he committed this offence.
The opinion, published by Mr Johnson on the government website four days before he left office, argued this interpretation of the rules was “fundamentally flawed”. The committee later hit back with a paper of its own, in which it defended the conduct of its investigation. It also criticised the publication of the document, saying it was “highly irregular” for inquiry evidence to be published by the government itself in advance of it being considered by MPs. In a letter to a different committee earlier this month, Cabinet Office Minister Oliver Dowden said the document was published due to the “exceptional circumstances” of the probe.
Partygate fines
On several occasions after the Party gate scandal emerged in late 2021, Mr Johnson told the Commons that pandemic rules had been followed. However, an official inquiry later found widespread rule-breaking had taken place, and Mr Johnson was among 83 people fined by police for attending law-breaking events. He has admitted his original statements to MPs have since proved incorrect – but has denied deliberately misleading Parliament. Earlier this month, he said anyone who thought he had been “knowingly covering up” lockdown parties would be “out of their mind”.
Labour leader Sir Keir has criticised the government for paying for Mr Johnson’s legal advice, saying he should “pick up the bill” himself. The Liberal Democrats have also called on the government to cancel the contract, with the party’s chief whip Wendy Chamberlain calling it “outrageous”.
