Michael Gove would not vote for Johnson Partygate reporton June 18, 2023 at 2:04 pm

Michael Gove says he will not vote for a report that found Boris Johnson deliberately misled Parliament over Partygate.

The housing secretary told the BBC there were areas where the ex-PM “falls short” of expectations.

But he said he disagreed with the report’s recommendation that Mr Johnson should have been suspended for 90 days if he had remained an MP.

Mr Gove said he would abstain in a vote scheduled for Monday on the report.

Downing Street has yet to say how Prime Minister Rishi Sunak intends to vote, or even if he would take part.

On Friday, his spokesman told reporters he was still taking the time to “consider the report fully”.

It will be a free vote for Conservative MPs, meaning party managers – known as whips – will not instruct them which way to vote.

In the damning 106-page report, the seven-member Commons privileges committee, which has a Tory majority, said Mr Johnson had deliberately misled MPs over lockdown parties in Downing Street.

He had “personal knowledge” of rule-breaking, and had “closed his mind” by not seeking assurances about compliance, it found.

It said it would have recommended a 90-day Commons suspension for Mr Johnson, partly because of his furious reaction to an advance copy of the report’s findings, including him calling the committee a “kangaroo court”.

The suspension will not apply given the former prime minister quit as an MP before the report was published.

The committee said his calling the committee a “kangaroo court” in his resignation statement had “impugned the integrity” of Parliament.

But speaking to BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Mr Gove said a ban of such length – rare in recent years – was “not merited by the evidence the committee have put forward”.

The housing secretary, who initially backed Mr Johnson for Tory leadership in 2016 before dramatically withdrawing his support, added there were “complexities” in the report.

“Reducing it to a single badge to pin on Boris Johnson I think isn’t right,” he added.

Opposition parties are expected to vote to endorse the report scheduled for Monday, which also calls for Mr Johnson to be stripped of the parliamentary pass he would normally be entitled to as a former MP.

However, it is not yet clear whether a division – where MPs go through the voting lobbies to indicate their support – will even take place, with Mr Johnson asking his supporters not to vote against the report.

If no one in the chamber shouts “no” to oppose a motion approving the report, it will be passed without a division, meaning the votes of individual MPs will not be recorded.

Several of Mr Johnson’s allies criticised the report’s findings last week.

Nadine Dorries, who was culture secretary in Mr Johnson’s cabinet, said the committee had “overreached,” warning that any Tory MP voting to endorse it would be “held to account” by party members.

Esther McVey, who was a housing minister in his government, said the demands for the former prime minister to be denied a parliamentary pass were “absolutely absurd and utterly unnecessary”.