City MP tackles Prime Minister over parties
Bath’s MP taunted the Prime Minister in the House of Commons in the debate following the publication of a “catastrophic” report into Downing Street parties and called for him to resign.
The report by senior civil servant Sue Gray, which excluded matters that are subject to investigation by the Metropolitan Police, criticised “failures of leadership and judgment” in No 10 and the Cabinet Office while England was under coronavirus restrictions in 2020 and 2021.
During the debate, Boris Johnson apologised and repeatedly declined to answer questions from both sides of the chamber about which parties he had attended, whether he had broken the law and whether he had lied to parliament, instead asking MPS to wait for the findings of a police report.
In one of the snappiest and most scathing one-liners of Monday afternoon, Wera Hobhouse got to her feet, and asked: “Does the Prime Minister need somebody else to tell him whether he was there?”
Replying to the MP for Bath, with the MP for North East Somerset Jacob Rees-mogg sitting at his right hand, the Prime Minister rose and said: “I refer the honourable lady to the reply I’ve already given.”
Ms Hobhouse said after: “Even with sections of the report redacted, Sue Gray’s report is catastrophic for Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party.
“A ‘failure of leadership’ is just one line from the report that is truly shocking. Boris Johnson has failed our country. He has lost all credibility and must resign.”
She continued: “I have been flooded with emails. Constituents have written to me and told me how they couldn’t see family members months before they died. Many have lost loved ones and funerals were held on Zoom. This report cements the Prime Minister’s shameful flouting of the rules as so many others suffered.”