4 Misleading the House
184. The House’s resolution of 21 April 2022 cited some of Mr Johnson’s answers at PMQs on 1 and 8 December 2021 as “appear[ing] to amount to misleading the House”, and referred the matter of Mr Johnson’s conduct to us to consider whether it amounted to a contempt.[1]
185. Mr Johnson himself, in the aftermath of the police issuing of Fixed Penalty Notices and the publication of the Sue Gray report in May 2022, has accepted that the House was misled. He told us in oral evidence:
There was a near-universal belief at No. 10 that the rules and guidance were being complied with. That is the general belief that […] governed what I said in the House. As soon as it was clear that I was wrong, and as soon as the Sue Gray investigation and the Metropolitan Police investigation had concluded, I came to the House of Commons and I corrected the record, as I promised I would.[2]
186. The question we consider in this section of our report is whether the House may have been misled in ways which go beyond those which Mr Johnson has acknowledged. In our Fourth Report, containing a summary of issues we intended to raise with Mr Johnson in his oral evidence, we set out “evidence that the House of Commons may have been misled in the following ways which the Committee will explore”.[3] We now revisit that section of the Fourth Report in the light of the full evidence we have taken in the inquiry. In our opinion the House was misled in each of the ways we listed. We set out below each category of misleading with a reference to the paragraphs in the present report which deal with it (and some further comments where appropriate). We then consider a number of further instances in which Mr Johnson may have been disingenuous with the House and with us.
187. We also consider the issue of Mr Johnson’s correction of, or failure to correct, the parliamentary record. In paragraph 110 of his written evidence, Mr Johnson states: “I believe that my statement to the House of Commons on 25 May 2022,[4] the publication of the Sue Gray report and its placing in the Library of the House of Commons, constituted a full correction of my honest but inadvertently misleading statements”. In paragraph 108, he argues that his statement in the House on 25 May 2022 “was the earliest opportunity at which I could make the necessary correction”. When asked during oral evidence on 22 March 2023 whether he wished to reassert that guidance had been followed at all times when he was present at gatherings to wish staff farewell, Mr Johnson maintained that “I see no reason to withdraw what I said on 25 May”, and that he did not wish to correct the record.[5]
