Boris Johnson’s government has been branded a “sleekit, grubby cabal” amid allegations of cronyism, lobbying and claims of donor funding of the Prime Minister’s Downing Street flat.
Alison Thewliss, MP for Glasgow Central demanded the Tory government hold an independent inquiry into claims of cronyism as she raised an Urgent Question in the House of Commons.
Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office Minister, was summoned to the despatch box on Monday to answer swirling allegations and claims by Boris Johnson’s former senior adviser Dominic Cummings that PM had “secret” plans for the renovation of the Downing Street flat were “unethical, foolish and possibly illegal”.
Cummings claimed the PM wanted a trust scheme for Tory donors to pay for the work but Downing Street has said the PM paid for the upgrade himself.
Johnson has also been forced onto the defensive in a bitter war with Cummings following revelations of lobbying by former PM David Cameron on behalf of Greensill Capital and the leaking of Johnson’s text messages to businessman James Dyson about changing tax policy.
Thewliss asked Gove how Ministers could be policed in the absence of an independent adviser who resigned last year.
She said: “In the absence of an independent adviser to investigate ministers, we can no longer trust them to investigate themselves and that much is clear.”
“So will the minister for the Cabinet Office instead instruct a full independent public inquiry to get to the bottom of this sleekit, grubby cabal in charge of the UK?”
Thewliss added: “From the contracts to the Health Secretary’s pub landlord to the cosy chumocracy of the Greensill Capital affair to the casual text messages between the Prime Minister and Sir James Dyson promising to fix tax issues apparently in exchange for ventilators we never even got, and now questions over the Prime Minister’s funding for feathering his Downing Street nest.
“I wonder if the minister will agree with me that this is a clear pattern of behaviour and it absolutely stinks.”
Gove replied: It is the case that the government, operating at a time when the pandemic was raging, did everything possible and we make no apology for it, to make sure that those at the frontline got the equipment that they deserved."
“The techniques that we used and the processes that we followed not only stand up to scrutiny, they were the same techniques and the same process used by the Welsh Government, by the Scottish Government, and by the Northern Ireland Executive.”
Gove also issued an angry denial of the unsourced claim that the Prime Minister would rather “let the bodies pile high in their thousands” than impose another lockdown last autumn.
Responding to SNP MP Stephen Flynn, Gove said: “The idea that he would say any such thing I find incredible. I was in that room, I never heard language of that kind.”
“I’m afraid that the honourable gentleman by seeking to make the point in the way that he does diverts attention from the fact that so many people who have been affected by this pandemic rely on the government, the NHS and others to strain every sinew.”
“The Prime Minister made the decision to have a second and third lockdown and I think we can see the evidence of the leadership that he showed then, not just in the courage that he showed, but also the success of the vaccination programmes from which people across the United Kingdom have benefitted.”
