The UK’s Commons Select Committee of Privileges may send a request to Carrie Johnson for evidence related to previously unseen text messages suggesting that she hosted a gathering that took place in her Downing Street flat on the UK prime minister’s birthday in 2020, The Telegraph has reported.
If the allegations are confirmed, the gathering can be seen as a second No 10 COVID rule-breaching event, as another was held on the same day in 2020, coinciding with Johnson’s birthday.
The committee is currently investigating whether Boris Johnson misled MPs over being unaware of COVID lockdown-busting parties at Downing Street between 2020 and 2021.
The Telegraph cited an unnamed parliamentary source as saying that the committee “will want to speak to Sue Gray and maybe Carrie”, arguing that the panel had stronger powers than senior civil servant Sue Gray to call witnesses and demand answers.
The source described the text messages-related allegations as potential “bombshells”, adding, “it blows apart the quality of the investigations by the Met Police and Sue Gray. It blows apart the suggestion that they cooperated all along and it blows apart the argument that the Prime Minister did not fib”.
The claims come after the Sunday Times reported that the text messages sent by Carrie Johnson to a No 10 aide appear to show that she was in the Downing Street flat with several friends on the evening of 19 June 2020.
The messages indicate that the an aide contacted Mrs Johnson on 19 June 2020 at about 6:15 p.m. to tell her that her husband was heading to the flat, with Carrie replying that she was already in the flat along with an unspecified number of friends, according to the Sunday Times.
The alleged gathering is separate to a birthday celebration held for Johnson in the Cabinet Room earlier on 19 June 2020, an event which resulted in the PM and his wife receiving Metropolitan Police fixed penalty notices for in April.
The purported second get-together in the PM’s flat was not mentioned in Gray’s “Partygate” report into lockdown-busting No 10 events that was published last week following the conclusion of the Metropolitan Police investigation into the matter.
A spokesperson for Johnson, however, insisted that Gray was “aware of the [19 June 2020] exchanges as part of her exhaustive inquiry into alleged breaches”.
“Staff were given ample opportunity to present evidence including these messages and all relevant information was passed to the Metropolitan Police for investigation”, the spokesperson told The Times.
Labour’s Deputy Leader Angela Rayner has meanwhile demanded an investigation into the alleged text messages, claiming that it “looks like yet another cover up and there are new questions the prime minister must answer for his involvement.”
“It is crucial that you now advise the prime minister to come clean about his involvement in this apparently rule-breaking gathering,” Rayner pointed out.
Sue Gray's 'Partygate' Report
In the report, which gave details of 16 alleged No 10 rule-breaking events between May 2020 and April 2021, Gray wrote that "what took place at many of these gatherings and the way in which they developed was not in line with COVID guidance at the time".
She stressed that "the public have a right to expect the very highest standards of behaviour in such places, and clearly what happened fell well short of this".
Speaking in the House of Commons after the publication of the report, Johnson denied he had ever knowingly misled MPs about parties in Downing Street, adding that he takes “full responsibility” for partying.