Yesterday, the House of Commons debated the Committee of Privileges’ report into the conduct of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Stephen spoke in the debate to support the reports findings and criticise Mr Johnson’s behaviour.
The Committee of Privileges found that Mr Johnson knowingly misled the House of Commons on several occasions about lockdown parties at Downing Street. The lockdown parties and the scandal that erupted following them are known as “Partygate.” The report also found Mr Johnson to be in “contempt of Parliament” for attacking the Committee.
The “Partygate” report recommended Mr Johnson be suspended for 90-days and lose his parliamentary pass. Parliament voted 354-7 to accept the report and its recommendations.
Speaking in the debate, Stephen recalled that Mr Johnson had previously misled the House, claiming that “there are more people in work than there were before the pandemic began” eight separate times, despite the Statistics Authority and the Office for Statistics Regulation told the then-Prime Minister that his statements were untrue.
“My conclusion from all of this,” Stephen said, “which I think sheds some light on the events covered by the report, is that Mr Johnson just is not interested in whether a statement is true or not. He is a clever man—he thinks quite hard about what he plans to say—but the criterion, “Is this true?” is not an important consideration for him.”