195. As the Clerk of the Journals points out, this means that cases are relatively rare, and while Committees have sometimes tried to draw out principles from precedent, they do not consistently do so.[1] Ultimately in each case it is up to the Committee of Privileges to determine:
- whether the conduct complained of is a contempt, and has reached the necessary bar set by the House;
- the degree of culpability of the contemnor.[2]
196. We have no difficulty in concluding that Mr Johnson’s misleading of the House has “obstructed or impeded the House in the performance of its functions”. A core function of the House is scrutiny of the Executive. A Minister who gives the House false information from the Despatch Box is impeding its ability to carry out its essential task scrutiny. As the Clerk of the Journals notes, “misstatements by Ministers are inherently likely to obstruct or impede the House”.[3] Misstatements by the Prime Minister, at the apex of the governmental system, are even more likely to do so.
197. In the present case the potential impact on Parliament’s ability to scrutinise the Executive was of no minor or trivial kind. For the House to be given misleading information about the conduct of Ministers and officials at the highest level of Government, in the midst of the grave national emergency represented by the Covid-19 pandemic, and in relation to how far those Ministers and officials were observing the severe restrictions which they were instructing the public at large to follow, is a matter of great seriousness.
198. We have given very careful consideration to the question of whether Mr Johnson misled the House recklessly or intentionally. He himself told us that:
I am here to say to you, hand on heart, that I did not lie to the House. When those statements were made, they were made in good faith, and on the basis of what I honestly knew and believed at the time.[4]
199. Mr Johnson argues that whether or not the Covid Rules and Guidance were breached at gatherings he attended, or was aware of, at No. 10 (and he continues to maintain in the case of the six gatherings we investigated that they were not breached), he himself, along with many others at No. 10, genuinely believed they were complying with the Rules and Guidance.
200. To a great extent this defence depends on whether Mr Johnson genuinely believed that the gatherings were work events that satisfied the criteria in the Rules that such events be (before June 2020) “essential for work purposes” or (from June 2020) “reasonably necessary for work purposes”, and the criteria in the Guidance that, if social distancing cannot be observed, such an event “needs to continue for the business [or organisation] to operate”. We have noted that Mr Johnson was not willing to say that, if asked, he would have advised the general public that work events intended solely to raise morale satisfied these criteria. We have set out, at paragraph 117 above, our
