Johnson promises not to censor Partygate report as Gray vows to name culprits

THE Prime Minister has promised not to censor names of people involved in the Partygate affair if they are contained within the Sue Gray report.

Boris Johnson was speaking on a visit to Powys, Wales, yesterday before he attends the Welsh Conservative conference.

Asked if he or his officials would seek to block any names of those involved in the law-breaking parties if they were contained within the top civil servant’s report, he said it was “entirely a matter for Sue Gray”.

The document is expected to be published next week.

Some expect Ms Gray to be highly critical of the culture within Government during the pandemic, after the Met Police fined 83 people 126 times for eight gatherings across Whitehall.

At least one person received five fines from the force for lockdown breaches.

The Prime Minister was asked if he would apologise now the Met Police investigation has finished, and responded: “I’m very grateful to the Met for their work, I’m thankful for everything they’ve done.

“We just need to wait for Sue Gray to report, fingers crossed, that will be very soon, and I’ll be saying some more next week.”

Asked if No 10 would be blocking any names from appearing, he said: “That will be entirely up to Sue Gray and I’ll be looking forward very much to seeing what she has to say and, fingers crossed, that will be pretty soon next week.”

He said the Government has the “fiscal firepower” to support people through the cost-of-living crisis, saying: “We’re putting in huge amounts of support right now and we will continue to do that.

“The reason we can is because we came out of Covid with a strong economy. We’ve got the fiscal firepower to put money into people’s livelihoods to try to support [them].”

Rishi Sunak has failed to announce new measures to help people since the rate of inflation reached a 40-year high of nine per cent earlier this week.

The Chancellor and Mr Johnson have been under pressure to bring in a windfall tax on gas and oil companies, which are making significant profits as a result of soaring energy prices.

Mr Johnson said it was vital the country did not get into the same difficulties in future, and blamed previous Labour governments. He said: “You’ve got to make sure that we don’t run into this kind of problem again, and it was the short-termism of previous Labour Governments that meant we didn’t have a dependable energy supply.

“I care deeply about the crunch now, but what we have to avoid, also, is future crunches and future spikes in the cost of energy.

“It is insane that this country is piping in electricity from the continent, from France.

“Crazy, when we’ve got hydrocarbons of our own, that we’re continuing to take them from Putin’s Russia.”