Downing Street Christmas Parties Investigation

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Thursday 9th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I just say to the Minister that his remarks were meant to take three minutes, not over four minutes. [Interruption.] Just a minute. So I will give some flexibility to the other two Front Benches.

[Fleur Anderson]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I thank you, too, for granting this urgent question today. I also thank the Paymaster General for his statement and for giving more information about this investigation.

Trust is vital during a pandemic—trust in the decisions being made and, most importantly, trust in the people making those decisions and the judgment about them. My constituent Sophie wrote to me yesterday to say:

“My mother died of Covid on Christmas Day last year—she was alone and frightened in an isolation room in hospital on 18 December while the alleged party was happening. She was admitted to hospital for a non-Covid related issue and contracted the disease whilst in there. Both of us had followed the rules and it breaks my heart that I was only able to see her a handful of times last year, and couldn’t be with her in her final moments.”

She is angry; people across the country are angry.

I welcome the Prime Minister’s announcement that he has asked the Cabinet Secretary to conduct an investigation. I have asked for this urgent question as there are further urgent questions to be asked about the investigation into the parties—we do not need to call them alleged parties; they were parties—held in a Government Department or by Government Ministers elsewhere. Are there more parties that we need to hear about? Is this investigation just a way of being able to say, “We’re doing something” while pushing it into the long grass, or is it a serious investigation?

The Prime Minster said yesterday:

“I have been repeatedly assured…that there was no party and that no covid rules were broken…But I have asked the Cabinet Secretary to establish all the facts.”—[Official Report, 8 December 2021; Vol. 705, c. 372.]

Who gave these repeated assurances? If there was no party, why did Allegra Stratton feel the need to resign? Is she taking the fall instead of Government Ministers? If this investigation finds that the Prime Minister has misled the House, will he resign?

I look forward to the publication of the terms of reference for the investigation later today. Will it include all the parties—not just the three but any others that were held? Who went to these parties? Can the Minister confirm that the Cabinet Secretary and the remainder of the legal team that has just been referenced did not go to any of the parties and so are able to conduct the investigation without personal interest? If they happened, who colluded for a year in the cover-up of these parties? When is the deadline for the investigation? How will the outcomes be made public? Is there any limit on the sanctions that will be given to people found to have been in the wrong?

I welcome the assurance from the Paymaster General that the matter will be referred to the police if there is a case to answer. We on the Opposition Benches will be following what happens very closely.

Finally, will the Government just be straight with the British people?