The chair of the Commons privileges committee Harriet Harriet has defended the work of her panel and condemned Boris Johnson’s Partygate lies – saying all prime ministers “must tell the truth”.
The senior Labour chair clashed with Johnson loyalist Jacob Rees-Mogg in a feisty Commons exchange – telling him Rishi Sunak’s government had backed her leadership of the cross-party committee.
Challenged by Mr Rees-Mogg about her “famous” tweets criticising Mr Johnson and the “perception of bias”, Ms Harman said she had “made it my business to find out whether or not it would mean that the government would not have confidence in me if I continued to chair the committee”.
She added: “I was assured that I should continue the work that the House had mandated with the appointment that the House had put me into and so I did just that.”
Cheered by the opposition benches, one Labour MP could be heard exclaiming: “Oh dear. I think that’s a mic drop! I think that’s a mic drop, Jacob Rees-Mogg.”
Ms Harman said Tory members of the committee have had to withstand a campaign of “threats, intimidation and harassment” designed to challenge the legitimacy of the inquiry.
Warning Mr Johnson’s allies that they could also be found in contempt of parliament for their “witch hunt” attacks, Ms Harman said such attacks “designed to pre-empt the committee’s findings, frustrate the will of the House, erode public confidence and thereby undermine our democracy – they may themselves be contempt of the House”.
She added: “We will be doing a further report to the House on this shortly inviting consideration of what could be done to prevent this happening in the future.”
Condemning the former PM, Ms Harman said: “Mr Johnson’s dishonesty if left unchecked would have contaminated the whole of government, allowing misleading to become commonplace and thus eroding standards which are essential for the health of our democracy.”
Ms Harman said: “There is no impunity for wrongdoing. Even if you’re the prime minister – especially if you’re the prime minister – you must tell the truth to parliament.”
Mr Rees-Mogg compared the privileges committee to “communist China”, and said the move to stripping Mr Johnson of his parliamentary pass was going “from the vindictive to the ridiculous”.
The former cabinet minister said: “For some reason the privileges committee thinks it’s in communist China, and that we must kowtow, and then they go on to say that Mr Johnson was ‘complicit in the campaign of abuse and attempted intimidation of committee’ without one single, solidarity shred of evidence.”
Another Boris backer, Nick Fletcher, argued that only Conservative MPs should be allowed to judge if fellow Tories have broken the rules. “If Man City’s star player had to sit in front of seven of his peers for a hearing how fair would it be if three of them were Man United players? Not very.”
But in a scathing intervention, former Tory prime minister Theresa May said Mr Johnson has been “found wanting” by lying to parliament – urging all Tory MPs to back the privileges committee’s report.
“I also say to members of my own party that it is doubly important for us to show that we are prepared to act when one of our own – however senior – is found wanting,” said Ms May in scathing remarks.
She added: “I will vote in favour of the report of the privileges committee. I urge all members of this House to do so, to uphold standards in public life, to show we all recognise the responsibility we have to the people we serve, and to help restore faith in our parliamentary democracy.”
MPs are expected to approve the privileges committee without a vote on Monday evening, though scores of Tories have stayed away. Mr Sunak was accused of being “too weak” to stand up to Mr Johnson and his “sycophants” after the PM ducked the Commons debate.
Labour’s shadow commons leader Thangam Debbonaire said Mr Sunak showed he is “too weak to stand up to Boris Johnson and his sycophants, which is profoundly dangerous, because if we can’t have a prime minister that stand up for standards, what have we got?”
