A senior minister has disputed claims that Sue Gray was pressured to dilute her report in Westminster offending parties, saying she is “confident” that the investigation had been completely independent.
Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis rejected suggestions that senior Downing Street officials had called for details of the so-called “Abba party” in Boris Johnson’s apartment during the blockade and that the names of staff members were eliminated.
The allegations were reported in the Sunday Times, which said three people pressured Gray to change key steps in his report on the eve of its publication: Steve Barclay, the prime minister’s chief of staff, Simon Case, the secretary of the Cabinet and Alex. Chisholm, the Permanent Secretary of the Cabinet Office.
Earlier in the week, The Guardian revealed how Conservative MPs feared there had been a “cover-up” about the Abba party, which Gray has admitted he did not fully investigate.
Lewis did not explicitly deny that Gray had been pressured to change his report because he said he was not involved in the investigation, but said “anyone who worked at number 10” knew that “this kind of thing would not work.”
He told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Sunday: “I’m sure, especially now that number 10 has made the point and denied that this happened, that Sue Gray was free to write the report she was comfortable writing. and publish. ”
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Since metropolitan police did not issue a fixed-term notice for the event, Lewis said this “supported” Downing Street’s denial of the story.
When asked how the media and the public could trust the number 10 after he initially denied that Covid’s rules had been broken, Lewis said: “It’s a different Downing Street, you have a different team of people. , the chief of staff is different: the team You are talking about who is working with the prime minister, who is leading these issues.
“Steve Barclay himself is new and was not there at the time of the original bugs.”
Johnson is likely to face further headaches, as his former chief adviser Dominic Cummings said metropolitan police and the cabinet office had ignored evidence of “crimes on the floor” where Johnson lived.
Labor said Johnson had to explain why the No. 10 figures “interfered in an investigation that had claimed to be independent and relied on Sue Gray.”
Angela Rayner, the party’s deputy leader, said: “It’s time to tell the truth to the public, but you can’t trust this prime minister to tell you.”
Johnson is facing an investigation that will likely begin next month to see if he tricked parliament into denying for weeks that any Covid rule had been breached.
Anneliese Dodds, the president of the Labor Party, said there were still not enough Conservative MPs to decide whether to try to oust Johnson or leave the Partygate scandal behind.
“We think that ultimately politics should be clean, it should be a force for good,” he said. “We should have all politicians subject to high standards.”