further week to reflect on the answers he had given and to seek more solid, legally based and authoritative assurances including from government lawyers or permanent career civil servants such as the Cabinet Secretary. In the event he chose not to do so, but to double down on the answers he had given earlier.
178. Asked why he had not sought advice from government lawyers, Mr Johnson stated that Jack Doyle and James Slack were “the people who had been there, and they were the direct—they could give a view about the legality of that event that I didn’t think a non-eyewitness would be able to do”.[1] In his written evidence, Mr Johnson likewise argues that “it was reasonable for me to find out what had happened from the people who were actually there”.[2] Neither Mr Doyle or Mr Slack, of course, were professionally qualified to adjudicate on the legality of the proceedings they had witnessed.
179. We have already addressed, in paragraphs 103 to 108 above, Mr Johnson’s argument that the Committee should give significant weight to an absence of evidence that he received advice that Rules and Guidance were broken in No. 10.
180. The overall thrust of Mr Johnson’s evidence to the Committee has been to downplay the significance and narrow the scope of the assertions he made to the House. He has argued that (a) the assurances he referred to related only to one gathering, that on 18 December 2020, and were correct in relation to that gathering; (b) his assertions to the House relating to assurances about Covid compliance were only in respect of the Rules, not the Guidance; and (c) when he referred three times to having repeatedly been assured about compliance, by “repeatedly” he meant “on more than one occasion and by more than one person”.
181. The problem with Mr Johnson’s attempts to portray his assertions to the House as narrow in scope is that this interpretation is directly at odds with the overall impression Members of the House, the media and the public received at the time from Mr Johnson’s responses at PMQs. The message which Mr Johnson clearly meant to convey was that Rules and Guidance at No. 10 had been complied with at all times. Indeed, Mr Johnson initially asserted that Guidance had been complied with when he had meant to say Rules, and rather than correcting what he now admits to have been an error, subsequently reiterated this assertion despite having been advised by his Principal Private Secretary not to make this claim. He was content to convey the impression that the events (plural) against which allegations had been made were in fact “non-events”, and, to paraphrase, that it was nonsense to suggest that the rule-makers at the heart of government were also rule-breakers.
182. The impression the House would have taken, and we conclude, would have been intended to take, from Mr Johnson’s repeated references to assurances was that those assurances had been overarching and comprehensive, and to be given great weight. In fact, as we have seen, the only assurances that we can be certain were given to Mr Johnson were arrived at in haste based on a press “line to take”, were not subject to investigation before either session of PMQs, and did not emanate from senior permanent civil servants or government lawyers but from two media advisers and were based only on their personal recollections. Although Mr Johnson claimed several
