BORIS Johnson has defended his decision to attend parties in Downing Street by claiming he had a “duty” to thank staff who were leaving.
The Prime Minister gave a press conference on Wednesday afternoon after the publication of Sue Gray’s report and a subsequent grilling by MPs in the House of Commons.
Much of Johnson’s statement reiterated the points he made in the chamber earlier that day, that he is sorry and accepts responsibility, but later claimed that many of the events in the report were “news to him” when he read it.
The Prime Minister has repeatedly used the size of Downing Street and the high number of staff there to back up this claim.
References in the Gray report show Johnson attended eight of the 15 events held over 12 days, depending on the event the PM was noted as staying for around half an hour or less.
And Johnson is using that as his main defence. Speaking at the press conference, he told journalists: “I tried to explain the context of why I was at other events where I was saying farewell to valued colleagues and I know that some people will think it was wrong even to do that. I have to say I respectfully disagree, I think it was right.
“When people are working very hard for very long hours, when they're giving up a huge amount to serve their country and then moving on to some other parts of government I think it is right to thank them, or leaving government service altogether.
“I think it is right to thank them and I repeat what I said in the Commons earlier on, you know, I believed that they were work events, they were part of my job, and that that view appears to be substantiated by the fact that I wasn’t fined for those events.”
Johnson added he felt it was his “duty” to make an appearance at the leaving-dos of departing colleagues.
He told a press briefing that “it didn’t occur to me that this was anything except what it was my duty to do as Prime Minister during a pandemic”
He added: “That’s why I did it, and that’s why I spoke as I did in the House of Commons. And, yes, as Sue has found and everybody can see and the evidence has shown, after I had been there things did not go well.”
Asked whether he heard music or partying in the building after he left the events, Johnson replied: “No, let’s be absolutely clear – this is a very big place.
“If you take No 10 and the Cabinet Office together, there are hundreds of rooms.
“My impression was that I was personally at work events, but that doesn’t absolve me of responsibility for what happened in this place.
“I take that responsibility and I continue to make sure we make changes. I apologised today to the House and to the country, but also to the custodians and the staff, who it now turns out were wrongly and badly treated – I think it is repugnant that that happened.”
Johnson said he didn’t know “specifically” who had been rude to cleaning staff in Downing Street, but added that he had begun to make enquiries to find out who.
The PM refused to comment on the staff members named in the report on multiple occasions. Those mentioned included his former private secretary Martin Reynolds, former communications director Lee Cain and other comms chief James Slack.
When asked specifically about Reynolds, who said in one Whatsapp message that staff “seem to have got away with” partying in Number 10, the PM was visibly angry. Reynolds has now been moved to the Foreign Office and reportedly will be made ambassador to Saudi Arabia. He previously held the role of ambassador to Libya in 2019.
Johnson hung his head, gave a stony stare before hitting back: “I’m really not going to get into the business of identifying any particular official or political appointee or anybody in this whole affair, I think it’s rightly so in the pictures that Sue Gray has put out, I think it's entirely right that I should be the one who's not pixelated. I'm the person at the top.”
The PM then appeared to say that he was not aware of the May 20 event being arranged by Reynolds and his subsequent reference to “getting away with it”.
Gray’s report says Johnson appeared at the garden event for 30 minutes at 6pm to “thank staff” before heading into a meeting with Reynolds. He did not return, she added.
The PM said: “So I want to be clear, I didn’t know that.
“For instance, a lot of the stuff that I saw in the report this morning was news to me. But I think it’s important that everybody who has and everybody who hasn’t been there, everybody who’s in any way involved in this whole sorry business, has got to learn the lessons, and that applies to everybody in the report.”
Johnson ended the press office by telling journalists that he had to “love them and leave them” after taking three more questions than the nine he was told by staffers to take.
