Category Archives: Ministerial Code

Boris Johnson will give TELEVISED evidence to Partygate probe next week. Buy popcorn!

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Boris Johnson: his evidence to the Partygate inquiry might be quite short – after all, his inquisitors really have only to show him this image of himself at a party he said he never attended and ask him if he was there.

This is one to put in your diary:

Boris Johnson will give public evidence about whether he misled MPs over Partygate on [Wednesday] March 22, the Privileges Committee has confirmed.

The former prime minister will be questioned by the cross-party committee from 14:00 GMT in a televised session.

In an initial report published earlier this month it said Mr Johnson may have misled Parliament multiple times.

But Mr Johnson has rejected this and said he believes the process will “vindicate” him.

I’m looking forward to this one, very much!

In fact, I might have a ‘Partygate party’ and invite friends to watch it with me. Wanna come along?

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Channel migrants: Braverman won’t apologise for comment on ‘activist blob’ of ‘left-wing’ civil servants

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Suella Braverman doesn’t think before broadcasting: she’s pictured in a committee where she claimed there were legal routes for refugees to enter the UK. Challenged on it, she couldn’t name even one.

Once again, for Tories, “sorry” seems to be the hardest word.

An email in Suella Braverman’s name, sent by Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) to party members, said the following:

“We tried to stop the small boats crossings without changing our laws.

“But an activist blob of left wing lawyers, civil servants and the Labour Party blocked us.”

See for yourself. I’m using an image posted by a journalist on Twitter because it clearly shows Braverman’s name:

The message has been savaged by Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA Union, which represents civil servants.

He stated in a letter to prime minister Rishi Sunak that it was “a direct attack on the integrity and impartiality of the thousands of civil servants who loyally serve the home secretary, doing some of the most complex and difficult work in government”.

Penman also said Braverman may have broken the ministerial code, which says ministers must “uphold the impartiality of the civil service”. Here’s the relevant part:

Braverman was challenged over this scandal by Robert Peston on his ITV show – and denied having anything to do with the email. Take note of Clare Hepworth’s comment prefacing the video below:

But it was sent out in Braverman’s name. From This Writer’s point of view, it is inconceivable that any government minister – or anyone at all – would allow a message to be sent out (in this case to many people at once) without having seen it or approved its contents.

So I think Ms Hepworth may be right that we may discover something different, some time in the future.

Mr Penman had already stated that, whether or not Braverman had approved the message that went out in her name, she should apologise for it:

As you have seen in the Peston video, above, Braverman has not apologised.

I wonder what the other members of the “activist blob” – the “left wing” lawyers and the Labour Party – have to say about the way they were mentioned. I would certainly expect Keir Starmer to object at Labour being described as “left wing”.

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Sunak sacks Zahawi: he wouldn’t go so he had to be pushed

Out: Nadhim Zahawi.

This is probably the least interesting political story of the weekend because we all knew it was coming.

Even though Rishi Sunak is a weak prime minister – he has to maintain support from all the different factions of the Conservative Party and that means he has to appease them – Nadhim Zahawi had put himself in an untenable position.

That’s what the ethics advisor, Sir Laurie Magnus, found anyway:

The PM said Sir Laurie Magnus’s inquiry made clear there had been a “serious breach of the ministerial code”.

Rishi Sunak asked for the probe after Mr Zahawi admitted paying a settlement to HMRC, including a penalty.

Sir Laurie said the MP had missed many chances to be open about his tax.

In his report for Mr Sunak, he wrote: “Mr Zahawi’s conduct as a minister has fallen below the high standards that, as prime minister, you rightly expect from those who serve in your government.”

Sir Laurie cited Mr Zahawi’s failures to update his register of interests until more than a year after HMRC started looking into his taxes.

When Mr Zahawi reached a settlement with the taxman in August 2022, this too should have been declared, Sir Laurie wrote.

After receiving the findings, Mr Sunak wrote to Mr Zahawi to say he had decided to remove him from government.

Mr Zahawi thanked the prime minister and said he took pride in his role in the vaccine rollout and the Queen’s funeral – but did not offer an apology or mention his tax affairs.

In fact, Zahawi took the opportunity to attack the media, in his letter to Sunak.

Here’s a TV report on this story:

Commentators are saying it is impossible to envision a circumstance in which Zahawi will return to frontline politics.

Good riddance.

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Rishi Sunak asks ethics advisor to investigate Nadhim Zahawi’s tax affairs

Here’s the current situation: Rishi Sunak has asked his (so-called) independent ethics advisor to “fully investigate” whether Nadhim Zahawi complied with the Ministerial Code in failing to make correct tax payments at the appropriate time.

This will be a big test for Sir Laurie Magnus. Smart thinkers say the purpose of an ethics advisor is to whitewash dodgy behaviour by ministers; if that doesn’t happen, if the decision goes against those in power, then the ethics advisor doesn’t last long in the post. We’ve seen that in recent years.

This is the story so far:

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Commons suspension update: NO ACTION over Ministerial Code breach?

Could anything else so succinctly demonstrate the power that Parliament has to hold the government to account – or rather the lack of it?

Commons Speaker Lyndsay Hoyle suspended a sitting of the House of Commons on Thursday (December 8) after discovering that Michael Gove had failed to deliver a full copy of a ministerial statement on the opening of a new coal mine, either to him or to Opposition parties.

This meant the Speaker was unable to select the MPs who would question the minister on the decision, because nobody had the information needed to inform such questions.

This is a breach of the Ministerial Code and by rights, Gove should have resigned.

But, as Maximilien Robespierre observes in the video below, he’s not going to resign.

He won’t be punished by prime minister Rishi Sunak.

And the Commons sitting was suspended for just five minutes.

Pathetic. Toothless. Pointless.

Here’s the clip:

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Speaker suspends Commons session after government breaks the rules AGAIN

They were warned.

Time and time again, Tory ministers have been told that their statements to the House of Commons have to be made in a very particular way, which is:

  • not after announcing what they’re doing to the media first, and
  • not without giving Opposition parties full access to the contents of their speech.

But Michael Gove – who has been in government on and off since 2010 and therefore should know better – broke those rules yet again, and this time Commons Speaker Lyndsay Hoyle had had enough.

He suspended the sitting of the Commons – firstly for five minutes and then for a longer period, in order to investigate Gove’s reasons for failing to supply more than a brief summary of his long speech before he delivered it and to provide Opposition parties with a chance to absorb what he had said and formulate questions on it.

Was Gove trying to avoid letting his fellow MPs have the chance to ask pertinent questions?

Or is he just incompetent?

As always, it’s hard to separate idiocy from intent with this lot.

The whole saga was captured on video, so you can watch it for yourself:

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Caught in a lie: so much for Sunak’s claim of integrity

PMQs: this might even be the moment, on October 26, when Rishi Sunak uttered the lie.

Rishi Sunak lied to Parliament during his very first Prime Minister’s Questions, according to the verification organisation Full Fact.

Here’s what researchers there have discovered:

Sunak’s words were clear, and implied clearly that he had seen information showing that a record number of dwellings had been built.

But no such information exists – or it would have been handed to Full Fact.

He lied.

Deliberately misleading Parliament in such a way is a serious breach of the Ministerial Code.

Boris Johnson is currently facing an investigation of claims that he lied to Parliament, that could lead to him being stripped of his job as an MP.

Sunak’s transgression is not quite as bad – but it is clear that he should be recalled to the Commons to set the record straight and apologise for trying to mislead us all.

And his claims of honesty and integrity now lie in tatters.

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Braverman has been using her private email for official papers ‘on an industrial scale’

Email a mess: this is not Suella Braverman, but considering her history of social media ineptitude, it might as well be.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman has admitted habitually breaking government rules by sending official documents to her private email address – and possibly on from there.

During her first period as Home Secretary, she sent government documents to her personal email address six times (in addition to the security breach that led to her resignation. That’s once every week during the 43 days she was in the post.

In a letter referring to the original breach of confidence, Braverman insisted there was no market sensitive or top secret information in the email she sent to Tory MP Sir John Hayes – that was also sent to an employee of fellow Tory MP Andrew Percy by mistake.

She reiterated her version of events after the offending email was sent – a timeline that conflicts with one that has been sent to the BBC.

And she said she apologised again for the breach when Rishi Sunak reappointed her Home Secretary, assuring him she would not use her personal email for official purposes and reaffirming her understanding of and adherence to the Ministerial Code.

How are we to believe that when the same letter admits she broke the rules six more times – as listed here?

She said using her personal phone this way – apparently the intention was to use the private phone to read documents while attending meetings on her official phone – was “reasonable in the circumstances and carried out in the public interest to enable me to do my job”.

And she insisted that she had acted “in accordance” with the official guidelines on ministerial email use.

It’s true that the High Court has ruled that the use of private email addresses, while controversial, is not against the law.

But handing confidential documents out to people who should not receive them is against the Ministerial Code and this excuse should not save her.

Braverman was set to give a statement on her other glaring cock-up (so far) – the scandal of the overcrowded migrant processing centre at Manston in Kent – late on Monday afternoon (October 31).

She was not expected to comment on the email scandal but may be questioned on it. This Writer wonders whether she’ll crack under the pressure.

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Grant Shapps DOESN’T have ‘no role’ in rail strike – he’s apparently interfering merrily

Grant Shapps: if he’s forced to resign over this, it won’t be the first time. You can bet he’ll protest his innocence this time, too.

It seems Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has been lying to Parliament – after he said he had no role in the rail strike, it has been alleged that he’s the one stopping agreement from being reached.

TUC chief Frances O’Grady said contracts mean the 15 train operators are unable to negotiate pay, conditions and pensions of 40,000 striking RMT workers without Shapps’s approval.

If they did try to reach a deal he could hit them with financial penalties by making them foot the bill for any extra wages costs.

This is based on legal opinion commissioned by the TUC from employment lawyer Michael Ford QC, who studied rail contracts to reveal a secret Dispute Handling Plan that rail operators must honour.

He said:

“These provisions mean train operators do not have freedom to negotiate matters which have given rise to the current dispute.

“It is the SoS, and not the operator, who has overarching direction and control of the strike.”

Of course, lying to Parliament remains a breach of the Ministerial Code that could potentially force an MP to resign.

So Shapps is now facing demands to actually do his job by resolving the rail strike in a way that ensures continued safety for passengers and security for workers – and then to resign from his job on grounds of corruption.

Source: Grant Shapps ‘misled public’ over claim he has no role in train strike – Mirror Online

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#Carriegate – tell the truth, media hacks: Johnson DID deny trying to get his now-wife a top FO job

The UK’s news sites were full of stories saying Boris Johnson had avoided a question on whether he tried to give his now-wife Carrie a Foreign Office job, at Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday (June 22).

This is not true.

Here’s what happened:

Labour MP Chris Elmore asked Johnson: “Has he ever considered the appointment of his current spouse to a government post or to any organisation in the working of the royal households? Be honest, prime minister, yes or no?”

To this, Johnson replied: “I know why the party opposite wants to talk about nonexistent jobs, in the media.”

He was very clearly denying that he had tried to get Mrs Johnson a job by saying that no such job existed.

If, in the future, evidence shows that he did try to get her into a job – that one did, in fact, exist – then he will have lied to Parliament again.

This Writer hopes Parliament’s Privileges committee is paying careful attention and asks the right questions.

Source: PM avoids denying he attempted to get Carrie Johnson top Foreign Office job

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