Number 10 was an “oasis of normality” during the pandemic with parties and social drinks continuing as normal, witnesses told MPs investigating whether Boris Johnson lied to Parliament over partygate.
The Privileges Committee on Thursday released its damming report which found the former Prime Minister had deliberately and repeatedly misled the Commons over lockdown gatherings in Downing Street.
Birthday parties, leaving drinks and end of week socials all “continued as normal” and staff were told to watch out for cameras, a witness told the committee.
They felt it was clear that lockdown rules were not being followed during the pandemic and “Wine Time Fridays” in the press office did not stop even when the Government imposed strict measures on gatherings.
“No10, despite setting the rules to the country, was slow to enforce any rules in the building,” the report states.
“The press office Wine Time Fridays continued throughout, social distancing was not enforced ...This was all part of a wider culture of not adhering to any rules. No 10 was like an island oasis of normality”.
The whistleblower added: “Operational notes were sent out from the security team to be mindful of the cameras outside the door, not to go out in groups and to social distance, it was all a pantomime.”
Mr Johnson was told he faced a three-month suspension from Parliament had he not already stepped down as an MP.
He announced his bombshell resignation from Parliament on Friday, formally quitting as MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip on Monday.
The panel also recommended that he be denied a former members pass that would allow him access to Parliament in future.
In their withering findings, the senior MPs found five grounds on which Mr Johnson misled the Commons, including most centrally by claiming Covid rules and guidance were followed at all times in No10.
He made “repeated contempts” of Parliament by deliberately misleading MPs with his partygate denials before being complicit in a campaign of abuse and intimidation of the committee.
They accused him of seeking to “re-write the meaning of the rules and guidance to fit his own evidence” and of “deliberately closing his mind” to facts about Covid rule breaches in Downing Street.
He accused the Privileges Committee of making “Mystic Meg” claims and said chairwoman Harriet Harman held “prejudicial views”.
The ex-premier called the committee “beneath contempt” and took particular offence at the panel’s findings about his knowledge of a Christmas cheese and wine gathering in December 2020.
“Perhaps the craziest assertion of all is the committee’s Mystic Meg claim that I saw the December 18 event with my own eyes,” he said.
“How on earth do these clairvoyants know exactly what was going on at 21.58?”
“How do they know what I saw? What retinal impressions have they somehow discovered, that are completely unavailable to me?
“It is a measure of the committee’s desperation that they are trying incompetently and absurdly to tie me to an illicit event - with an argument so threadbare that it belongs in one of Bernard Jenkin’s nudist colonies.”
