Privilege: Conduct of Right Hon. Boris Johnson

Lia Nici Excerpts

Monday 19th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lia Nici (Great Grimsby) (Con)]

I have to speak in the House today because I cannot see where the evidence is that Boris Johnson misled Parliament knowingly, intentionally or recklessly. [Interruption.] I am from Grimsby, and I have to say it as I see it. [Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order, it is important to listen to the hon. Lady.

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[Lia Nici]

I have to say it as I see it, because that is what my constituents would want me to do. [Hon. Members: “Have you read the report?”] Yes, I have read it, and I think that is an appalling question to ask a Member in this House. The reality is that Boris Johnson did not knowingly or intentionally mislead the House. [Interruption.] If people would like to listen, the reason I say that is last year, for six months, I was one of Boris Johnson’s Parliamentary Private Secretaries. I was the only Member of Parliament who was with him for the whole day on the publication of the Sue Gray report.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

The hon. Lady says having read the report that she sees no evidence of Boris Johnson’s wrongdoing. Does she agree that there is none so blind as those who will not see?

[Lia Nici]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments, but I am aiming my speech at members of the public who have got more interesting things to do than to spend their time reading the whole of the report, as I unfortunately did. I suggest that people go to pages 85 to 88 and read the quotes. The reality is that there were some people who had parties, but sadly those people were unelected officials who still should have stood by, making sure that they were not putting Ministers potentially in difficult situations by advising them incorrectly.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister led all of those people. He was the team leader for all those working at No. 10 and in the Cabinet Office who were at those parties. During lockdown, I volunteered at West Middlesex Hospital, taking food to the wards because the staff working in them were not allowed to go to the canteen. They certainly were directed by the chief executive of the hospital trust that they could have no parties—not even leaving parties, not even wine Fridays. They had no parties for that whole period. Does the hon. Member have any comprehension of what her constituents in the same position were feeling like when they heard the evidence?

[Lia Nici]

Yes, I do. What we need to look at here is what I witnessed first-hand, and what happened was that people advising the then Prime Minister at no point advised him that there were parties. They advised him again and again—

[Sir Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Lia Nici]

No, I will not give way at the moment. Those people advised the then Prime Minister again and again that no rules were broken and that guidance was followed at all times. Everybody in this place knows that no Minister stands at the Dispatch Box and knowingly misleads. They have to take counsel from people who advise them, many of whom are giving legal advice that they know to be the truth, but the public do not necessarily know that that is the case. If you are a Prime Minister and you are advised in that way again and again, no matter how you question that advice, you have to stand at the Dispatch Box and give those statements, because that is what you have been legally advised to do. People may not like that, but that is the truth, and that is why I am standing here and saying this.

The sad thing is, many people who gave that advice are still working in and around No. 10 and Whitehall, but we do not know who they are because they are not a high-profile politician.

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

I wonder whether the hon. Lady might reflect that it sounds like she is trying to deflect blame from Boris Johnson and put it on to unelected members of staff, and that people here and people at home may find that, to put it mildly, rather unedifying.

[Lia Nici]

I thank the hon. Lady. What I would say, actually, is that I have had the privilege to work with many unelected officials—special advisers and civil servants —who have been professional, worked hard and been good at giving accurate advice, but, from the evidence in the report, we all know that there were those who did not. We cannot shy away from that; we know that is the case.

[Sir Jake Berry]

To build slightly on my hon. Friend’s point, the report needs to be narrow in scope—it is about what the Prime Minister said to this House—but I draw her attention to paragraph 20 on page 71, which seeks to go much further than that. It talks about not what the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson said but about the interpretation given to that by Members of this House, by the media and by the public. The former Prime Minister cannot be held responsible for what people thought he may have meant; if the report is to hold any water, he should be held responsible for what he said.

[Lia Nici]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that. Of course—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. We really must hear what the hon. Lady has to say. It is not fair just to mutter away when she is making her argument.

[Lia Nici]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank my right hon. Friend for identifying that. Of course, he is absolutely right. I have to say that I do respect the amount of hard work put into the report, but if, in my former job as a college lecturer, I was grading this, I would say it is not impartial. It says Boris Johnson “claimed” and Boris Johnson “purported”, and that is not impartial language. Therefore, in my opinion, the report is not impartial in the way it is written.

To go back to my original point, on the day that the Sue Gray report was published, the Prime Minister was horrified to read what had been going on, and at no time did anybody on oath give evidence to this inquiry that they reported that there were parties or rule-breaking to the Prime Minister. Now, some people might say, “Well, he lived in No. 10—he should have known.” Actually, those people who have worked in No. 10 will know that it is a rabbit warren of rooms with thick walls, the people working there are running the country and the Prime Minister is not the caretaker of the building. It is not the Prime Minister’s job to go round, look in rooms and decide who may be working and who may not be working. In fact, the Sue Gray report did state that unelected officials were rude to doorkeepers and staff, yet given that No. 10 is full of police officers and security people, if the rules were being broken and that was seen, why did nobody report that to the Prime Minister so that he was aware of it?

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

The hon. Lady made the very good point that the Prime Minister at the time was not the caretaker of No. 10. However, he was the caretaker of the nation’s health, the nation’s wellbeing and the nation’s trust. In that, he let people down and he misled this House, and that is why the report came up with the conclusions that it did.

[Lia Nici]

I do not agree. I am from Grimsby and I can only say it as I see it. I saw on the day that the report was published that Boris Johnson had not been aware of the parties that had been going on.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I am from Birmingham and I say it as I see it. Does the hon. Lady think that there is any chance that Boris Johnson could also have lied to her?

[Lia Nici]

No, I do not believe that he did. I think I am a very good person who can see character, and I saw what was going on in and around No. 10 on that day. Sadly, I believe that some unelected officials—many are very good and professional—made a choice not to inform the then Prime Minister because they wanted to cover their own backs. I am very sad to say that.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Ind)]

Is the hon. Lady aware that, in 2019, Max Hastings, the editor of The Daily Telegraph and a Tory, said about Boris Johnson:

“Johnson would not recognise truth, whether about his private or political life, if confronted by it in an identity parade”?

Is not the truth that Boris has lied for so long and so often that it can come as no surprise that he is lying in this instance?

[Lia Nici]

I am not a Conservative party grandee. I am not somebody who has followed Boris Johnson’s political or other career for a long time. I am somebody who came here to serve my constituency and my constituents, who are the reason I am here. The majority of them supported Boris Johnson, his policies and his vision for the country.

Sadly, the whole saga in and out of the media is becoming a kind of political opportunism for those people who do not like Boris Johnson’s approach, do not like Boris Johnson’s policies and do not like Boris Johnson’s plan. I have to say that that is not what I am getting on the doorstep. Perhaps if the Opposition had a plan and had the people, they might have a chance of getting into government some time soon. This is about people who want a formidable opponent out of their way, because they do not believe that they will get into government in any other way. That is my stance.

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

May I first thank my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman)? I should probably thank her more than anybody in the Chamber because the wisest thing I have ever done in my political career has been to recuse myself from chairing the Committee. She has done an absolutely admirable job. I also thank all the Committee members—as has often been referred to, the Conservative members in particular. I will not go into the other matters that, for other reasons, the Committee Chair referred to, about privilege and whether this should be referred back. I simply point out that I know all the Conservative members of the Committee because they are also on the Standards Committee. They do a wonderful job every single time.

The former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), was right to say that it is very difficult to sit in judgment on your colleagues, including your opponents. That is not actually any easier than sitting in judgment on people who have sat on the same Benches as you or have been in the same party as you. But let’s face it: Boris Johnson lied. He said the guidance was followed completely. It wasn’t. He said that the rules and guidance were followed at all times. They weren’t. And I take the plain meaning of his words. You do not have to investigate any further—just the plain meaning will do. He said he had repeated assurances. He didn’t. He misrepresented the facts as he knew them. Meanwhile, people died in isolation, lost their livelihood—we often forget that bit—or missed out on a wedding or another very important moment in their family life because they abided by the rules. They thought that the big truth of the pandemic was that we were all in this together. That is why there is visceral anger. I hear it often from those who think that some people did not abide by the rules and that those were the people who wrote the rules.

This is not a single instance of accidentally mis-speaking either. Many Members have said that of course that happens. We have a proper process, which we have had since 2007, for a Minister to correct the record. Interestingly, the only time Mr Johnson corrected the record as a Minister was when he said that Roman Abramovic had been sanctioned and realised that he had not been sanctioned. So a Russian oligarch is perhaps more important than other matters. Yes, Mr Johnson was careless—reckless, you could say—about the truth, but far, far worse than that, he deliberately, intentionally and with knowledge aforethought sought to cover his tracks. It was a pattern of behaviour, a string of lies. And I do not much care for the version of the debate today which says, “Oh, it was all junior officials and they should be thrown under the bus” or “It was the fault of the police because they did not bother to report it or deal with it.”

[Lia Nici]

I thank the hon. Gentleman most graciously for giving way. Actually, it was not just about junior unelected officials. Where were the senior managers in this? Where were the line managers in this stopping this happening? Does he know?

[Sir Chris Bryant]

The thing is that, sometimes when you try to take the spade off somebody when they are digging the hole, they are absolutely determined to take it back and bring a pitchfork and a JCB to the process as well.

Mr Johnson says he has been brought down by a witch hunt, but in all honesty the only person who brought down Mr Johnson was Mr Johnson and I suspect he knows that. I think that this House feels that he should be ashamed of himself and that will be what it concludes later today, but I fear that he remains completely shameless.

Is the sanction proportionate? Of course, it is very difficult to sanction somebody who has already taken the option of running away from this House and from facing the music here or for that matter in their constituency. But that is still important. What we debate today is not an academic matter. That is not a criticism—

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[Lia Nici]

Does my hon. Friend realise that Mr Johnson was advised by advisers not to challenge that fixed penalty notice?

[Nick Fletcher]

No, I did not know that. It is good that it is now on record and that the House does.

The report looked at six events and the photos that had been produced and concluded that they were in breach, but not at the events in the most recent videos. Parties happened, and stronger leadership may have prevented them, but the right hon. Gentleman was not at those parties. I saw this weekend the video of others partying. He was not there, but I can see the hurt that it has caused, and I know that people feel wronged and want justice. I know that people lost loved ones; I did, too. But the storing up of hate for those people will not bring our loved ones back, so I ask this for their sake: somehow, we need to find it in our hearts to move on.

The right hon. Gentleman has lost the top job. He has now resigned his post as a Member of Parliament. Trust me, he has paid the price. As for the young people in that video, they should have known better and do not deserve to be honoured, but I cannot ask the public to forgive and not do so myself, so I do. But I ask them to learn from these errors, or life will be tough for them and everyone around them. The video was posted by the media—a media whose only intention is to sell papers. Do not be tricked, anybody: the media are bastions of free press, but not always for the right reasons, so I say to the press: “Do the job, by all means, but think of the implications.” I ask them to use their power wisely.

I come now to the motion. If I vote for the report, my haters will love me for five minutes and then hate me again. If I vote against it, the ones who have lost loves ones will think that I do not care, and I desperately do. If I abstain, I please no one. But I am not here to please; I am here to do what I think is right. I will therefore vote against the report because I think the process is flawed. I will vote against because pleasing the Opposition will not bring back my constituents’ loved ones. I will vote against because the right hon. Gentleman has already left, so, in some cases, the vote is already futile. I will vote against because he has been punished enough. I will vote against because if I ask people to forgive, then so must I. I will vote against because this country has had enough, and so have I.

I finish by asking the right hon. Gentleman whether, if he cares about our country and his party as much as I think he does, he will back our Prime Minister and our party, and help to get this country back on track. This country and its people have suffered enough through covid, and it is time to move on. A decade of Labour will be terrible.