Boris Johnson will publish the full report into lockdown parties in Downing Street once the Metropolitan police investigation has concluded, in a significant U-turn after an angry response from Conservative MPs.
No 10 had promised only to consider publishing fuller evidence once police inquiries have ended. But a spokesperson said on Monday night that Johnson would ask Sue Gray to make a further update to her report, after a severely redacted version was published to avoid prejudicing the Scotland Yard probe.
The No 10 spokesperson said: “Given the police have said they are investigating a number of events, it would not be appropriate to comment further while the Met’s investigation is ongoing.
“But, at the end of the process, the prime minister will ask Sue Gray to update her work in light of what is found. He will publish that update. However, the prime minister is clear we must not judge an ongoing investigation and his focus now is on addressing the general findings.”
The change came after a number of MPs hinted they would no longer support Johnson unless he fulfilled his pledge to release the full findings.
Mark Harper, the former chief whip, said his constituents had questioned the prime minister’s “fitness for office”, but he had reserved judgement. He said Gray’s findings should be published “immediately and in full” after the Met investigation.
Tobias Ellwood, chair of the Commons defence committee, also tweeted: “If the PM fails to publish the report in full, then he will no longer have my support.”
Julian Lewis, chair of the Commons intelligence and security committee, said: “May I advise him publicly what I have said to emissaries from his campaign team privately: that it is truly in his interest, in the government’s interest, and in the national interest that he should insist on receiving the full, unredacted report immediately, as I believe he can, and that he should then publish the uncensored version without any further delay?”
Before the scale of Tory anger became clear, the prime minister’s official spokesman told journalists Johnson was not committing to further publication. “He will consider what is appropriate. Obviously, at the start of this, he was the one that commissioned this report.”
Gray is understood to have prepared a fuller version of the report for publication before the Met announced its inquiries on Tuesday last week. In a statement on Monday, the force said it had received more than 500 pages of evidence and 300 photos linked to apparent parties in Downing Street and Whitehall.
But the Met said its request to keep “minimal reference” to events being investigated would apply only for the duration of their investigation.
A statement from the force said: “As part of the investigation, it is necessary for us to contact those who attended these events to get their account. As a result, the Met has requested that any information identified as part of the Cabinet Office investigation about these events is not disclosed in detail. This request only applies for the duration of our investigation and does not apply to events we are not investigating.”
The Met is not investigating four of the 16 gatherings examined by Gray, but she said she could not give details of the four parties “without detriment to the overall balance of the findings”.
Whitehall sources said Gray needed permission from Johnson to publish a fuller version, but suggested that in providing an “update” on Monday she was making clear that it was not the version she hoped would be eventually published.
“This is a clever tactic,” one source said. “It makes it very difficult to avoid publishing a fuller version. This is not her first rodeo. I always thought appointing her would be their biggest mistake.”
