Did the PM mislead No 10 ‘wallpaper’ inquiry chief ?

He asked donor for cash... despite denying he knew who was paying for £112,000 makeover ++ Tories fined £17,800 for breaking rules

‘Made a mockery of standards’

BORIS Johnson was accused last night of lying to his own sleaze watchdog about the lavish makeover of the Downing Street flat.

An official report revealed that the Prime Minister had texted Tory donor Lord Brownlow asking for more cash more than a year ago.

But Mr Johnson previously assured Lord Geidt, the Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests, that he did not know who was paying for the £112,549 refurbishment at the time.

He could now face yet another probe into the ‘wallpapergate’ scandal, exposed by the Daily Mail, in the wake of the damning findings by the Electoral Commission.

The commission yesterday fined the Conservative Party £17,800 for breaking political finance law over the saga.

Downing Street insisted Mr Johnson had not lied to his adviser and said: ‘The Prime Minister has acted in accordance with the rules at all times and he acted following discussions with Lord Geidt. He has made all necessary declarations.’

But the PM was put under fresh pressure by his former right-hand man Dominic Cummings, who was in Downing Street when the expensive redecoration works were being planned for the living quarters above No 11.

He wrote on Twitter that he had told the PM ‘in extremely blunt and unrepeatable terms’ in January and the summer of 2020 that ‘his desire for secret donations to fund wallpaper etc was illegal and unethical’.

Mr Cummings said: ‘He pursued it throughout the year trying to keep me/ others in dark and lied to Geidt/CCHQ [Conservative Party headquarters] to cover it up.’ He added: ‘I’ve said repeatedly for months: a) obviously PM lied to Geidt, b) Geidt could only conclude as he did by ... not interviewing anybody actually involved with the flat!’

In February this year this newspaper told how Mr Johnson’s wife Carrie had been plotting against a ‘female Whitehall official who refused to sign off a large taxpayers’ bill for her refurbishment of the Downing Street flat, including expensive wallpaper’.

The Mail then revealed how secret plans had been hatched to get Tory donors to pay for the decoration by eco-friendly interior designer Lulu Lytle, as the PM privately complained he could not afford the ‘gold wallpaper’ Mrs Johnson was buying.

There was also a scheme to set up a charitable trust for the maintenance of the historic Downing Street buildings, with Tory donor Lord Brownlow made its chairman.

Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, who learned of the machinations through this newspaper, began investigating and passed his findings to ministerial watchdog Lord Geidt.

In May Lord Geidt cleared the PM of breaching the ministerial code, only saying that he had ‘unwisely’ ‘allowed the refurbishment of the apartment at No 11 Downing Street to proceed without more rigorous regard for how this would be funded’.

This conclusion was based on Mr Johnson telling him ‘that he knew nothing about such payments until immediately prior to media reports in February 2021’.

But a separate investigation by the Electoral Commission, which published its findings yesterday, uncovered evidence that on November 29, 2020, the Prime Minister ‘messaged Lord Brownlow via WhatsApp asking him to authorise further, at that stage unspecified, refurbishment works on the residence’.

The report provides the most detailed account yet of the complex web of payments, totalling £112,549.12, involved in doing up the flat.

The Cabinet Office paid the invoices initially, the money was subsequently repaid by CCHQ and then Lord Brownlow and his firm Huntswood Associates made donations to the party to cover the costs. In order to clear up the mess, Mr Johnson settled the bill directly with the designer earlier this year – so she had to pay back those whose had originally paid her.

The Electoral Commission found that the majority of the £67,801 given to the Tories by Lord Brownlow’s firm last October should have been reported as a donation, but was not.

The party was fined for ‘failing to accurately report the full value of the donation’ and ‘contravening the requirement to keep proper accounting records’.

Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner said: ‘The Prime Minister must now explain why he lied to the British public saying he didn’t know who was behind No 11 flat refurb – all the while he was WhatsApping the donor asking for more money.

‘He’s not only broken the law but made a mockery of the standards we expect from our prime ministers.’ She has asked Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Kathryn Stone to investigate the discrepancy between what the PM told Lord Geidt and what the Electoral Commission found.

A spokesman for the watchdog’s office declined to comment.

A CCHQ spokesman said: ‘We have been in constant contact with the Electoral Commission and have sought their advice as to how the transaction should be reported since it was made. We are considering whether to appeal.’