THE HOUSE of Commons yesterday late afternoon by 569 votes to 29, a majority of 486, decided to approve the ‘Stormont Brake’ – part of the ‘Windsor Framework’.
The Stormont Brake will allow the Northern Ireland Assembly to object to a new EU rule which would trigger a brake on its implementation.
The vote interrupted Boris Johnson’s appearance before the House of Commons Committee of Privileges.
Before the break he insisted: ‘Hand on heart, I did not lie to the House.’
Before starting his statement, Johnson was asked by Committee Chairman Harriet Harman if he believed his written submission the committee has published is true. He said: ‘I do’.
Johnson went on to say that on a number of days over 20 months, gatherings took place at Downing Street that ‘went past the point where they could be said to be necessary for work purposes.
‘That was wrong, I bitterly regret it, I understand the public anger and I continue to apologise for what happened on my watch,’ he said.
He said the purpose of this inquiry is not to reopen ‘so-called Partygate’, it’s to discover whether or not I lied to Parliament, misled colleagues and the country about what I knew and believed about those gatherings.
‘I’m here to say to you, hand on heart, that I did not lie to the House.’
Johnson said that before Sue Gray’s report and the outcome of the police investigation were made public there was ‘a near universal belief’ at No 10 that rules and guidance were being complied with.
He says this belief ‘governed what I said in the House’ and that as soon as it was clear this was wrong he corrected the record.
Johnson added that he was ‘deeply shocked’ when fines were issued by police for gatherings in government buildings.
Johnson said the whole of the No 10 operation ‘knew how vital it was to maintain public confidence in the fight against Covid’. He added that they all knew they should do what they had asked the public to do.
Johnson referred to the testimony of his former aide Dominic Cummings, who he said had ‘every motive to lie’ and was not supported by ‘documentary evidence’.
He said the committee had not gathered any evidence that he lied but that it had, in fact, gathered evidence he did not know the rules were broken.
The former PM said he has asked the committee to publish all the evidence it produced, but it had not.
He concluded: ‘If rules were broken, this must have been “obvious” to others – including the current prime minister Rishi Sunak too.’
