Met chief to be scrutinised over partygate
Questions over Scotland Yard’s £500k investigation that fined the PM once despite going to six events
‘Many of us are scratching our heads about how junior civil servants have been fined... yet the Prime Minister escaped’
SIR STEPHEN HOUSE, the Acting Met Commissioner, is set to be questioned over the force’s handling of the partygate investigation when he appears before the London Assembly next week.
Scotland Yard is facing criticism for refusing to present how it reached its verdict following the four month investigation into illegal gatherings in Downing Street and Whitehall.
It concluded on Thursday with a total of 126 Fixed Penalty Notices being issued to people deemed to have breached lockdown rules.
But the findings have raised eyebrows after the Prime Minister only received one fine, despite confirmation that he attended six events. The Met’s investigation, Operation Hillman, has remained shrouded in secrecy with the force refusing to identify the people who were fined and which events were deemed illegal.
Sir Stephen, who took over as Acting Commissioner when Dame Cressida Dick stepped down in April, will be pushed to explain why some attendees received fines but others did not.
Members of the Assembly’s Police and Crime Committee are expected to seek answers about how the Met reached its conclusions and whether the £460,000 cost was justified.
Sir Stephen has been invited to attend the session on Thursday afternoon but has not yet confirmed whether he, or one of his senior team, will attend.
The source said: “There are very serious questions for the Met over the way this matter has been handled. It is important for the reputation of the force that the public understand why they have acted in the way they have.
“This investigation has cost half a million pounds so the Acting Commissioner needs to be transparent about the way the operation was handled. For example, many of us are scratching our heads about how junior civil servants have been fined for attending the same gatherings that the Prime Minister and their bosses were at, when they escaped. If there is a simple explanation for that conclusion then the public deserve to know it, especially given that this has cost them half a million pounds.”
While the partygate investigation is not on the official agenda for next Thursday’s meeting, it is thought that Assembly members will seek to grill Sir Stephen at the first opportunity.
Len Duvall, the leader of the Labour group on the London assembly, said: “I think from the information in the public domain, he [Johnson] has got away lightly. It is for the police to justify why there was just one fine.”
Downing Street yesterday blocked a select committee appearance by Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary, and Darren Tierney, the Cabinet Office’s head of propriety and ethics. The pair had been set to appear in front of Parliament’s Public
Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee on Tuesday, but No10 informed the committee that “events have caused us to pause and consider sequencing more broadly”.
William Wragg, the committee’s chairman, said the decision “evades timely parliamentary scrutiny of these plans and puts government transparency in a poor light”.
Scotland Yard’s refusal to provide any further detail on Operation Hillman has also caused frustration with Sue Gray, the senior civil servant, who is preparing to publish her report into partygate.
She is expected to name and criticise senior civil servants and politicians over their conduct during partygate, but the Met have refused to provide any details of those who have been fined.
A source close to Ms Gray said: “The Met’s approach is certainly making things difficult for Sue.”
Other sources close to the Gray investigation told The Daily Telegraph that only senior civil servants would be named, and that detail on the activity of specific staff members would be sparse. “It’s not going to be ‘Barry drank 10 pints and was sick on the cat’,” a source said, adding that it would likely never be revealed which aide broke the swing belonging to Wilfred Johnson, the Prime Minister’s twoyear-old son, during one of the events in the Downing Street garden. I doubt very much whether you will find out who drank the most,” the source said.
Ms Gray is expected to publish her report on Tuesday or Wednesday, although the process could be delayed by weeks if civil servants decide to challenging the findings. Those named will be given a chance to respond to allegations against them. “There will always be a risk that someone will take offence and say they are getting their lawyers involved,” a source said. “I don’t think it’s inevitable but we can’t rule it out.”
Last night it was reported that Mr Johnson and Ms Gray have met for a face-to-face meeting about her investigation, despite previous suggestions from Downing Street that the pair had not directly discussed it.