Early evening summary
- Labour has accused Boris Johnson of corrupting the standards of public life expected in high office. (See 3.50pm.) The shadow Cabinet Office minister, Rachel Reeves, made the comment in the Commons as she launched a particularly strong attack on Johnson for reportedly saying he would rather see “bodies pile high in their thousands” than order a third lockdown. Johnson denied making the comment, first reported by the Daily Mail, but there are multiple reports from reliable news sources (eg here and here) confirming the Mail story. Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, defended Johnson robustly in the Commons, but even his denial seemed to be so carefully worded as to be consistent with the detail of the allegation being true. (See 4.41pm.) Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, told MPs that he was not ruling out a leak inquiry into the story - implying the story was well founded. (See 2.32pm.)
- Case was unable to deny suggestions a Tory donor played some role in paying Johnson’s flat refurbishment bill. Downing Street says Johnson met the cost (reportedly £58,000) himself, but there are reports that the money was initially paid by a donor. At the committee hearing Case was unwilling or unable to say exactly what happened. (See 3.03pm.) He did not make a good impression. This is from Politico’s Alex Wickham.
This ridiculous Simon Case stonewalling act going down very badly with Tory MPs as well...
— Alex Wickham (@alexwickham) April 26, 2021
One asks: “Who is this bloke and what has he been doing for the last six months? Judging by how little he knows about anything he can’t have been working as cabinet secretary”
And this is from ITV’s Robert Peston.
Jaw-droppingly empty testimony to MPs by cabinet secretary Simon Case. He says 1) so much time has elapsed that chances of identifying Chatty Rat close to nil; 2) he simply does not know if party or private donors helped settle Downing St refurb costs. The...
— Robert Peston (@Peston) April 26, 2021
- The size of the Conservative lead over Labour has halved over the past month, a new poll for Ipsos MORI suggests.
POLL
— Joe Murphy (@JoeMurphyLondon) April 26, 2021
Tories plunge five points in a month after weeks of sleaze storm, reveals @IpsosMORI in tonight’s @EveningStandard
Con 40 (-5)
Lab 37 (-1)
LD 8 (+2)
Green 5 (nc)
mf .....https://t.co/pwWncwY6gE
The drop in support for the government has coincided with multiple sleaze allegations dominating the news.
-
Johnson has urged the public to be “realistic” about the prospect of the UK being hit with another wave of coronavirus infections in the future. On a visit to Wrexham he said:
The numbers of deaths, the number of hospitalisations, are currently very low. That doesn’t mean that we have got it totally licked, it doesn’t mean that Covid is over.
We have got to be realistic about that. Unfortunately there probably will be another wave of the disease.
That’s all from me for today. But our coronavirus coverage continues on our global live blog. It’s here.
Updated
The government has launched its summer schools programme to help students recover lost learning as a result of the pandemic, inviting secondary schools in England to apply for a share of the £200m fund on offer.
Despite a growing campaign calling for a “summer of play”, the government’s newly published plans for the two-week summer camps say they should have “an academic focus” supported by enrichment activities.
The camps are aimed at children about to move from primary school into year seven in secondary school and are aimed at those whose education has been the most disrupted.
The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, said:
Additional support this summer - on top of the National Tutoring Programme and additional funding for schools - will help boost learning and wellbeing plus help prepare those pupils about to start secondary schools.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the decision to hold summer schools and their content was at the discretion of schools and not a universal expectation. He went on:
We would also emphasis that the main thrust of education recovery must be around what happens in the classroom when all pupils are in school during term-time.
Updated
The EU is at an advanced stage of talks with the US over mutually recognising vaccine passports to boost transatlantic tourism this summer, but Brussels is yet to open discussions with the British government, my colleague Daniel Boffey reports.
The government must urgently gather and publish evidence about the accuracy of rapid coronavirus tests and how they are used by symptomless members of the public, the Royal Statistical Society has said.
The group’s Covid-19 taskforce said it supported the concerns raised by the UK’s healthcare regulator about Boris Johnson’s multi-billion pound universal testing programme.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has told the government the country-wide initiative, which launched earlier this month, is “a stretch” of the authorised use of the lateral flow tests.
The MHRA has approved the devices to be used to find coronavirus cases but not to act as a “green light” for people who test negative to enjoy greater freedoms. The regulator is concerned that people who test negative will be given false reassurance by their result and will let down their guard if they believe they are Covid-free.
The Royal Statistical Society said today:
There has been no sustained effort to try and find out what percentage of negative lateral flow results show up as positive on a PCR test in schoolchildren, or when used at home for mass testing. This uncertainty will be exacerbated as more people start to use them, as they have been encouraged to twice a week. Current evidence suggests that lateral flow tests miss too many infected cases to be used to rule out infection, which limits their usefulness as tests to enable or release.
The government should urgently gather more evidence on their accuracy in context of use, by carrying out evaluations using double testing with lateral flow and PCR tests. They should also be clear in their communications about what is known about the tests’ effectiveness, and how positive and negative lateral flow results should be interpreted. A strong, well-articulated evidence base is an essential prerequisite for an effective testing regime.
Updated
As the Lib Dem peer Chris Rennard tweets, a Lords committee is recommending that byelections for hereditary peers, which were suspended during the pandemic, should resume. These byelections are widely criticised.
Deeply disappointing that @UKHouseofLords is to resume the anachronistic practice of holding by-elections for more HEREDITARY peers. Nobody should inherit voting rights in a legislature. @LibDemLords @LabourLordsUK @thesundaytimes https://t.co/WUdIlSuz0G
— Chris Rennard 🔶💙 (@LordRennard) April 26, 2021
Updated
The BBC bulletin at the top of Radio 4’s PM programme was leading on a story saying that Boris Johnson did say that he would rather see bodies “pile high in their thousands” than order a third lockdown despite Boris Johnson’s denial. The BBC says “sources familiar with the conversation” have confirmed it.
Labour has accused the government of a “stealth cut” to school funding over changes to pupil premium payments aimed at the most disadvantaged pupils.
During education questions, ministers were accused of giving extra catch-up funding to schools with one hand, while taking away virtually the same amount in cuts to pupil premium.
“It’s a case of the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away - almost exactly,” one MP told the Commons.
Headteachers say pupil premium funding has been cut because the census on which the payments are based was done in October rather than January, meaning pupils who become eligible during that period will have to wait a year before the school can secure the additional money.
The shadow education secretary, Kate Green, called on the government to publish full financial analysis of the funding lost to schools “from this pupil premium stealth cut”, which would mean schools were unable to pay for speech and language therapy or an extra teaching assistant.
Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, responded:
[Ms Green] forever moans and complains about the resources, the extra resources that we have been putting into schools.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of National Association of Head Teachers, said later:
The government may say ‘no child left behind’, but with this simple ‘administrative tidy-up’ they have found a way to snatch back funding from schools and to further entrench educational disadvantage for the poorest families.
Updated
In the Commons Labour’s Wes Streeting asked Michael Gove to be “absolutely categorical” and say he did not hear Boris Johnson says the “bodies pile high” comment and that the PM did not say those words.
In his response, Gove repeated the point that he had been in a meeting in the cabinet room with the PM. He never heard the PM say “any such thing”, he said. They were all dealing with difficult discussions.
This answer did not address the point that the remark might have been made outside the room, after the meeting was over. See 4.41pm.
Updated
Gove says idea of PM saying he would tolerate thousands of deaths 'incredible'
This is what Michael Gove said in response to Stephen Flynn’s question about the PM’s alleged remark about his being willing to “let the bodies pile high in their thousands” rather than order a third lockdown. Gove said:
I was in the meeting that afternoon with the prime minister and other ministers as we looked at what was happening with the virus, with the pandemic ...
We were dealing with one of the most serious decisions this prime minister, or any government, has had to face. People have been pointing out quite rightly than tens of thousands of people were dying.
The prime minister made a decision in that meeting to trigger a second lockdown, he made a subsequent decision to trigger a third lockdown. This is a prime minister who was in a hospital himself, in intensive care.
The idea that you would say any such thing, I find incredible.
I was in that room, I never heard of language of that kind, and I’m afraid that [Flynn], by seeking to make the point in the way that he does, I think 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.
These decisions are never easy, but the government made the decision, and 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.
Gove was raising his voice quite a lot during this reply.
Many people listening will have taken this a passionate, and persuasive, denial of the Daily Mail story from someone who was actually there. And perhaps it was.
But if the Mail story was simply untrue, Gove could have just said it was untrue, and students of politico-speak may instead categorise this as an example of a non-denial denial – although a particularly sophisticated one. (Gove prides himself on his cleverness.)
Gove’s denial consisted of two parts. First, Gove said: “The idea that you would say any such thing, I find incredible.” This sounds like a denial, but in fact it is not far off what Sir Keir Starmer said about the remark (see 12.25pm), in a comment intended as a criticism. Starmer said it was “astonishing”, and Gove said it was “incredible”; perhaps they were both horrified.
And the second part of the denial consisted of Gove saying that he was “in the room” and never heard language like that. But, as Robert Peston reports (see 12.30pm), the detailed allegation is that Johnson made this comment in his study, after the meeting, not when he was in colleagues in the actual cabinet room. Gove may have thought he had found a way of denying the story without having to lie.
Other elements that suggest this was a non-denial denial were Gove’s repeated focus on the fact that Johnson ordered a third lockdown in the end anyway (a mitigating factor – because it implies that even if Johnson did make this comment, he did not really mean it) and the emotive language he used (about the PM being in hospital), which sounded like a heavy-handed attempt at distraction.
Updated
Stephen Flynn (SNP) asks about the PM’s alleged “bodies pile high” remark.
Gove says he was at this meeting. He says Boris Johnson made the decision to order a second lockdown, and then a third lockdown.
The idea that he would say any such thing, I find incredible.
I will post the full quote in a moment. It is worth a close look.
The Times’ Henry Zeffman thinks MPs are letting Michael Gove off the hook.
Half an hour into the Gove urgent question and still no MP has asked him to deny that the PM made the bodies comment. But I'm sure they all have great clips for Twitter. 21st century parliament!
— Henry Zeffman (@hzeffman) April 26, 2021
The Green MP Caroline Lucas says Liz Truss was wrong to say yesterday that people dismiss these matters as “tittle tattle”. She says people care about standards in office; that is why more than 13 million people have watched the Peter Stefanovic video about the PM’s misleading comments to MPs.
Now almost touching 13 million views!
— Peter Stefanovic (@PeterStefanovi2) April 26, 2021
Clear evidence of PM shamelessly misleading Parliament
Six Opposition leaders calling for a vote on an inquiry into the PM’s relentless lying to MPs
Why has this still not been reported on national news @BBCNews?
pic.twitter.com/PlvEkEij1V
Gove accuses Labour of wanting to scrap the lobbying legislation introduced by the David Cameron government.
(Labour says it does not go far enough.)
Updated
Margaret Hodge (Lab) says the government implied last week he had paid for the upfront costs of the Downing Street refurbishment. But today he did not deny that donors paid for the upfront costs. How many more times will be be allowed to mislead MPs?
Gove says the PM paid for the costs of the renovations.
In his response to Rachel Reeves, Michael Gove for a second time refused to repeat the PM’s denial of the claim he was willing to “let the bodies pile high” rather than order a third lockdown. This is from the Mail’s Jason Groves.
Michael Gove has ducked two opportunities to challenge claim the PM said he would rather 'let the bodies pile high' than order a third lockdown. But points out that the PM did, in the end, order a third lockdown
— Jason Groves (@JasonGroves1) April 26, 2021
Gove is responding to Reeves.
He says Labour prime minister’s spent taxpayers’ money refurbishing Downing Street. This PM is spending his own money, he says.
He quotes some of the figures from last week’s written statement – which put the Tony Blair figures in terms of how much those sums would be worth today.
Updated
Johnson 'corrupting standards of public life', says Labour's Rachel Reeves
Rachel Reeves, Gove’s Labour shadow, says Boris Johnson is now “corrupting the standards of public life”.
She says the pipes are now bursting with sleaze allegations.
And she criticises the PM for his alleged “bodies” remark. Those comments are “stomach churning”, she says.
She calls for an inquiry into the pandemic.
UPDATE: Here is a fuller quote from Reeves.
The prime minister is now corrupting the standards of public life expected in high office.
As he tries to cover up payments for the luxury refurbishment of his Downing Street flat, possibly breaking the law through undeclared loans.
As for leaks, we are now seeing the pipes burst with the sewage of allegations.
The fish rots from the head down.
There is a reason why there is no independent advisor on ministerial standards.
There is a reason why the government won’t publish the long overdue list of ministerial interests.
The prime minister hasn’t wanted them.
This is a prime minister who would rather “let the bodies pile high” than act on scientific advice.
They are not bodies. They are people and loved ones, and they are missed.
Updated
Gove is responding to Thewliss.
He defends the PPE procurement process. The government had to act quickly, he says. And they were the same processed used by the Scottish and Welsh governments and by the Northern Ireland executive.
He says Sir James Dyson spent his own money on ventilators, and the public accounts committee praised the ventilation procurement programme.
He says Thewliss has cited a quote from a newspaper, without pointing out that Boris Johnson ordered a second and third lockdown.
(Gove does not repeat Johnson’s denial.)
He also says the opposition criticised the vaccines taskforce for spending money on PR, when that PR was intended to ensure black and minority ethnic people had confidence in vaccines.
Alison Thewliss (SNP) says the government is “riddled with conflicts of interest and allegations of corruption”.
She says 37% of people think the PM is corrupt. (See 10.07am.) In Scotland it is more than 50%, she says.
She says Boris Johnson’s alleged comment about being willing to see bodies pile up was “despicable, cruel and callous”.
Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, is summarising the role of the ministerial code.
He says the code offers guidance. But it is for ministers to decide how they act.
Ministers are not employees. He says they only hold office at the behest of the PM, and so it is for the PM to decide if they have followed it or not.
He says a new independent adviser on ministerial standards will be appointed soon.
That adviser will oversee the publication of an updated list of ministerial interests, and that list will be published soon after the adviser is appointed, he says.
Michael Gove answers Commons urgent question on ministerial code
The public administration committee hearing is still going on, but I will be focusing now on Michael Gove in the Commons. He is about to answer a UQ on the ministerial code.
David Jones (Con) says it is “extraordinary” that Case and Tierney do not know on what basis Lex Greensill was working in No 10.
Q: Greensill would have been able to use that job to discover information that would have helped him sell services to government.
That’s what we are looking at, Tierney says.
Q: It looks like a glaring conflict of interest.
Yes, it does, says Tierney.
Lex Greensill's status as No 10 adviser when Cameron PM 'unclear', MPs told
Wragg says the committee will now ask about the Greensill Capital affair.
Case starts by saying that No 10 has already set up a review, headed by Nigel Boardman. He says he will give the committee what information he has.
Q: Was Lex Greensill a special adviser at No 10?
No, says Case.
Darren Tierney, director general for propriety and ethics in the Cabinet Office, who is giving evidence with Case, says Greensill’s exact status in No 10 when David Cameron was prime minister was “unclear”.
Case says he will not discuss what advice he has given about mobile phones. (Last week it was reported that he had tried to get Boris Johnson to change his number.)
But he says in some respects this is a “red herring”. He says politicians’ phone numbers are likely to become well known. He says the important thing is that contacts are disclosed.
Q: If phone calls and text messages are not covered by the rules on disclosure in the ministerial code, how can we be sure that standards are being kept?
Case says government business is government business. Contacts have to be disclosed, whatever the means of communication.
Q: So when will the PM publish his text messages?
Case says a document was published on Friday fulfilling the promise Johnson made at PMQs last week to publish his messages.
Here is the document. It was well short of what Boris Johnson said he would publish.
Updated
John McDonnell (Lab) asks how permanent secretaries can ensure the rules are followed while keeping their job. He says permanent secretaries who have challenged ministers recently have lost their job.
Case says mostly the relationship is collaborative. He says ministers asks permanent secretaries for advice in how to follow the ministerial code.
Q: That did not happen to Philip Rutnam (the Home Office permanent secretary forced out by Priti Patel).
Case sidesteps McDonnell’s point, and repeats his argument about ministers and permanent secretaries working together.
Case says the appointment of a new independent adviser on ministerial standards will be announced within days rather than weeks. He says No 10 has been considering whether to change the remit of the job. Any changes will be announced when the new person is appointed, he says.
Labour’s John McDonnell told Case that his answers were poor so he sounded like a “badly-scripted version of Yes Minister”.
Cabinet secretary does not deny suggestion Tory donor played role in paying PM's flat refurbishment bill
David Jones is asking the questions again.
Q: Will the cost of the refurbishment of the PM’s flat be paid for by private donations?
Case says there are offices in Downing Street and residences.
The Cabinet Office pays for the refurbishment of offices.
For decades there has been an allowance of up to £30,000 a year to allow PMs to refurbish the residences. Any cost above that is paid for by the PM personally.
He says there has been talk of setting up a trust to fund this. Chequers and Dorneywood are run by trusts. And the White House has a trust.
Lord Brownlow agreed to head up a putative trust. And works was done on identifying potential trustees, Case says.
Case says he became aware of this this year. “This is a genuinely complicated legal, constitutional, propriety issue,” he says.
A charitable trust would not be able to pay for the private areas of Downing Street, he says.
Q: So are any private donations being used?
Case says all of this will be declared in the usual way.
Q: Are you aware of any donations being used.
Case says the PM has asked him to conduct a review.
Jones interrupts. He says he wants to know if Case is aware of any private donations being used.
Case says the PM has asked him to conduct a review, and share the details with the committee.
Q: How long would that take?
A matter of weeks, says Case.
Jones asks his question again.
Case says he does not have all the facts at his disposal, which is why he is conducting a review.
-
Cabinet secretary does not deny claims that private donors have helped pay for PM’s flat refurbishment. In a written statement last week Lord True, a Cabinet Office minister, said that costs for the refurbishment had been “met by the prime minister personally”. But there have been reports that the bill was first paid by a donor, and the government has not said whether Johnson ‘met the costs’ by repaying the donor, or whether he himself has had a loan to help him cover this cost. Case’s comments suggests a donor has been involved.
Updated
That may be all we get on the leak inquiry. Wragg says they are moving on, and he asks about the cabinet secretary’s role in upholding ethical standards.
Case says propriety and ethics are the responsibility of everyone in public service.
Maintaining standards is as much about culture as it is about rules, he says.
Q: What can you do as cabinet secretary to ensure policy is made in a proper way?
Case says he has three levers. First, the guidance and the codes. Second, how civil servants support ministers generally. And, third, as cabinet secretary he is responsible for advising the PM on how cabinet government is enforced properly.
Updated
William Wragg, the committee chair, asks if a new Official Secrets Act is needed.
Case says that is a matter for parliament.
Q: I know a leak inquiry launched in August that is still not finished. Is that not long enough?
Case says he does not know what Wragg is referring to. But sometimes investigations can take “a very long time indeed”, he says.
Q: Can you remember a time when No 10 was more leaky?
Case says if you read historic diaries, you will see there were always leaks.
And he challenges the claim that No 10 was responsible for these leaks.
Case says No 10 can only compel people to cooperate with a leak inquiry if the leak reaches the threshold for police involvement.
Updated
Case does not rule out inquiry into 'let the bodies pile high' leak – despite PM claiming it's untrue
Labour’s John McDonnell goes next.
Q: Will there be a leak inquiry into today’s allegations about the PM saying he would be happy to see thousands of people die?
Case says he will have to think about this. He says he has the authority to order a leak inquiry, but that he would normally do so following consultation with the PM.
(This is a very odd reply; if the claim is untrue, there is no need for a leak inquiry. That would have been the obvious reply for Case to give. But instead his reply implies the leak has some substance.)
Updated
Case says the leak does not meet the threshold for an offence under the Official Secrets Act or for misconduct in public office.
Labour’s Lloyd Russell-Moyle says, if that is the case, why can’t Case answer these questions to the committee.
Case says, just because there may not be a prosecution, that does not mean there aren’t national security issues involved.
He says this is in the hands of the Government Security Group.
Updated
David Jones, a Conservative former cabinet minister, goes next.
Q: Is it true [as Dominic Cummings said in his blog] that you told the PM’s director of communications that he could say Cummings had been cleared by the leak inquiry?
Case says he is unable to say. There are constraints on what he can say, he says. He apologises to the committee.
This is from my colleague Rafael Behr.
Case basically taking the fifth. Might as well call it a day.
— Rafael Behr (@rafaelbehr) April 26, 2021
Cabinet secretary dismisses claim PM wanted to wrap up No 10 leak inquiry to protect his fiancee’s friend.
Q: Is it usual to tell people half way through an investigation that they have been exonerated?
This is a reference to Dominic Cummings saying in his blog last week that he had been told he had been cleared.
Case says he will not comment on individuals.
But he says there are different types of leak inquiry.
Some leaks are referred to the Government Security Group.
If it is thought the leaking of the information constitutes a crime, it is referred to the Metropolitan police, he says.
Q: Can investigations be suspended without conclusion before they have gone their full course?
Case says in theory that is possible. But he says he is not aware of circumstances in which that might happen.
Q: Has an investigation every been stopped because the result was going to be embarrassing?
Case says he only knows about his time in office (he only became cabinet secretary last year), but he says he does not know of a case like this.
Q: So we can discount the stories at the weekend (ie, the claim from Cummings that Boris Johnson wanted to stop the “chatty rat” inquiry because he thought it would implicate a friend of his fiancee’s)?
Case at first suggests he is not clear what this refers to. But then he says the PM is “very determined to see these inquires complete”.
- Cabinet secretary dismisses claim PM wanted to wrap up No 10 leak inquiry to protect his fiancee’s friend.
MPs question cabinet secretary about lobbying and government
Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, is giving evidence to the Commons public administration committee.
He says Downing Street is keeping the Speaker of the Commons informed about the progress of the so-called “chatty rat” leak inquiry (the leak of the plans for the second lockdown in the autumn of last year) on privy counsel terms.
My colleague Jessica Elgot says Michael Gove will answer the SNP UQ (see 10.21am) at 3.30pm rather than leaving it to a junior colleague.
Gove is going to personally answer the UQ on this today in the House of Commons - government had been sending junior ministers out to bat on previous scandals.
— Jessica Elgot (@jessicaelgot) April 26, 2021
He will also deny the PM ever said those words, despite sources corroborating Mail story with @Peston and @bbclaurak https://t.co/hy9qO9xtf7
Johnson says there is 'very good chance of opening up totally' in England on 21 June
Boris Johnson has also said he thinks there is a good chance that England will be able to open up fully on 21 June. Speaking to reporters, he said:
As things stand I think we’ve got a very good chance of really opening up totally on 21 June.
But we’ve got to be cautious and go on the data not the dates.
Under the roadmap for lifting Covid restrictions in England, all legal limits on social contact should be lifted on 21 June or later.
But government scientists argue that some measures - like continued social distancing, or mask wearing - will be advisable beyond that point. What is not yet clear is to what extend these measures might be mandatory, and to what extent the government will just rely on people taking precautions anyway.
'Total, total rubbish' - Johnson firms up his 'let the bodies pile high' denial
Boris Johnson has firmed up his denial of the claim that he said he would prefer to see “bodies pile high in their thousands” than order a third lockdown. (See 9.20am and 11.50am) In response to another question about whether the claim was true, he said:
Total, total rubbish. What I certainly think is that this country has done an amazing job with the lockdowns. And they’ve been very difficult. And they’ve been very tough for people. And there’s no question about that.
Nobody wants to go into a lockdown but they’ve helped us. The discipline the public has shown has helped us to get the numbers of cases down very considerably.
He also claimed people were not interested in claims like this. He said:
I know why you’ve got to focus on this sort of stuff, but I really think, I really think that that is not where the public are, I’m talking to, today.
What they want to hear about is our plans for jobs, growth, bouncing back, for delivering on the road map, going from the 12 April step to the 17 May step, going through to 21 June, what’s the world going to look like on 21 June. To what extent are we really going to be powering through this?
(“People don’t care about this” is normally an argument that politicians deploy when asked about awkward revelations that are true, not ones that they are confident that they can dismiss as false.)
No 10 does not deny PM personally called newspaper editors to tell them Cummings to blame for hostile leaks
The Downing Street lobby briefing is over. Here are the key points.
- The prime minister’s spokesman issued his own denial of the claim that Boris Johnson had said he would rather see thousands die than order a third lockdown. Asked if the report was true, the spokesman said: “No. This is untrue. He has denied that in his clip just now.”
- The spokesman did not deny reports that Boris Johnson called some newspaper editors himself last week to tell them that he thought Dominic Cummings was to blame for the hostile leaks about him.
- The spokesman would not comment on claims that MI5 was involved in the so-called “chatty rat” leak inquiry, or that evidence had been found implicating Cummings.
- The spokesman denied claims that Dan Rosenberg, the PM’s chief of staff, told the Manchester United boss Ed Woodward ahead of the European super league announcement that No 10 would not try to block it.
- The spokesman said that a new independent adviser on ministerial interests would be announced “very soon”. The post has been vacant after Sir Alex Allan resigned after Johnson effectively ignored his conclusions about Priti Patel.
Johnson does not deny discussing getting Tory donors to pay for his Downing Street refurbishment bill
Speaking to reporters in Wrexham, Boris Johnson also did not deny that he had discussed getting Conservative donors to pay for his Downing Street flat refurbishment instead of paying the bill himself. The sum involved is reported to be £58,000. Asked if he had ever discussed using donations to fund the work, Johnson replied:
If there’s anything to be said about that, any declaration to be made, that will, of course, be made in due course.
In his blog on Friday Dominic Cummings, the PM’s former chief adviser, said that last year Johnson did propose getting donors to foot the bill and that Cummings told him this plan was “unethical, foolish, possibly illegal and almost certainly broke the rules on proper disclosure of political donations”.
Updated
People aged 44, or who are going to turn 44 before 1 July, can now book a coronavirus vaccine in England. The booking form is here.
Johnson denies saying he would rather see 'bodies pile high' than order third lockdown
In response to the first question about whether or not he had made the comment attributed to him in the Daily Mail, Boris Johnson said “No”. He went on:
But, again, the important thing that people want us to get on to do as a government is make sure that the lockdowns work, and they have.
And I really pay tribute to the people of this country that have really pulled together and, working with the vaccination programme, we’ve got the disease under control.
When the reporter sought to clarify that Johnson was saying he did not make those comments, Johnson said yes, he was saying he did not make those comments.
Sky News is broadcasting an interview Boris Johnson has given this morning.
He has denied making the comment about letting bodies pile up high.
Boris Johnson asked, did you say you would let "bodies pile high in their thousands"? PM: "No, but I think the important thing that people want us to get on and do as a government is to make sure that the lockdowns work, and they have."
— Hugo Gye (@HugoGye) April 26, 2021
I will post the full quotes shortly. The question Johnson was responding to was not particularly audible, and so it was not 100% clear quite what he was denying.
Robert Peston, ITV’s political editor, has written a blog saying he has spoken to two sources who heard Boris Johnson make the comment that he would rather see bodies pile high than order a third lockdown. Peston writes:
I am told he shouted it in his study just after he agreed to the second lockdown “in a rage”. The doors to the cabinet room and outer office were allegedly open and supposedly a number of people heard.
I am bothering to repeat this assertion about what the prime minister said because two eyewitnesses - or perhaps I should say “ear witnesses” - have corroborated the Daily Mail’s account to me.
Also these sources insist they did not brief the Mail, so that suggests there are three sources.
Updated
Starmer says he was 'astonished' by comment about Covid deaths attributed to Johnson
Sir Keir Starmer has said Boris Johnson must make a public statement about the comments attributed to him in the Daily Mail today. (See 9.20am and 11.50am.) Speaking to reporters, Starmer said:
Like everybody reading that, I was astonished to see those words.
It’s for the prime minister, I think now, to make a public statement about that. If he did say those things, he’s got to explain it. If he didn’t, go on the record and publicly explain what was said and what wasn’t said because I think everybody will be deeply concerned, not least all those families that have lost someone during this pandemic.
Andrew Gimson, who has written a biography of Boris Johnson that is broadly supportive and sympathetic, has said that he thinks Johnson may well have made the comment about preferring thousands more deaths to a third lockdown - but that he thinks the “man in the pub” will appreciate his candour. This is from the Mail’s Jason Groves.
Boris Johnson's biographer Andrew Gimson says the PM 'may well have' made 'tasteless' remark about allowing dead bodies to pile up but believes it will 'strengthen his reputation as a man who talks as a man in the pub would'
— Jason Groves (@JasonGroves1) April 26, 2021
In the House of Lords the constitution committee has just started taking evidence from Mark Sedwill and Gus O’Donnell, who are both former cabinet secretaries, about the cabinet manual. There is a live feed here.
In their opening remarks O’Donnell and Sedwill both said the cabinet manual - effectively the rule book for ministers - was a useful document. But Sedwill also stressed that it was primarily a codification of rules laid down elsewhere.
Why evidence suggests Johnson did say thousands of deaths would be better than third lockdown
It is all very well reporting that Boris Johnson said at a meeting in October, as he reluctantly ordered the second lockdown, that he would rather “let the bodies pile high in their thousands” than order a third lockdown, but is it actually true? Here is an assessment of the Daily Mail story taking into account the relevant factors.
How credible is the reporter?
The story was written by Simon Walters, who has been a political journalist since the 1980s and who is now assistant editor at the Daily Mail. For almost 20 years he was political editor at the Mail on Sunday. No one would describe Walters as a neutral journalist, but he is regarded by colleagues as an outstanding story-getter (he has won four British Press Awards) and the general lobby view is that, if Walters has written a story, it would be wise to take it seriously.
How credible is the source?
Recently Walters broke a series of stories about Boris Johnson wanting Tory donors to pay for the refurbishment of the Downing Street flat. It is widely assumed that these came wholly or partly from Dominic Cummings, who is engaged in a vendetta against Carrie Symonds, the PM’s fiancee and the person held responsible for refurbishment being so expensive, and today’s story also looks like a Cummings operation.
Cummings himself would probably not feature near the top of a list of the most honest men in Britain. The Vote Leave campaign that he ran had at its centre the infamous £350m figure that was widely dismissed as false, and his claim last year that he took a trip to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight made him a national laughing stock because it was widely seen as implausible.
But it is perfectly possible - indeed, even quite common - for people to tell the truth in some contexts and not in others. With regard to his claims about the government’s handling of Covid, Cummings seems confident he will be vindicated because he is calling for a public inquiry (he never called for a public inquiry into the truth of the £350m claim) and he says he wants it to have access to the relevant documents. He also has some of this evidence himself, he implied in his blog on Friday.
It is also worth pointing out that the Walters story reads as if various sources have contributed. At times different aspects of the story are attributed to “sources”, “those who say they heard” Johnson make the comment, “a source close to [Michael Gove], and “insiders”.
Is the claim credible as a statement of what Johnson thought?
The statement suggests that Johnson was very, very opposed to a further lockdown; so opposed, in fact, that he implied almost anything would be better.
Did Johnson really think this? Actually, we know that the answer is yes, because he said so himself. This is what he told the Telegraph in July, when he said he was opposed to a second lockdown.
Yes. I mean, look, I can’t abandon that tool any more than I would abandon a nuclear deterrent. But it is like a nuclear deterrent, I certainly don’t want to use it. And nor do I think we will be in that position again.
Is the wording credible?
As discussed earlier (see 9.20am), what is so damning about the comment its implication that Johnson did not care about people dying. It is one thing accepting that your granny might have died as a result of a difficult decision Johnson took about the timing of lockdown. But it would be another thing entirely hearing that Johnson did not care about your granny dying.
So can you imagine Johnson saying: “No more fucking lockdowns – let the bodies pile high in their thousands”?
Actually, yes – because hyperbole and vivid imagery have been Johnson’s trademark qualities throughout his entire career, as a journalist and a politician. They are what make him interesting, and different from more norm-observant politicians. It is very easy to imagine him saying something like this. Remember, he is the person who joked about the effort to procure ventilators being “Operation Last Gasp”. And, as Alex Wickham points out in his London Playbook briefing, Johnson once made a tasteless comment about “dead bodies” in Libya.
As a classicist whose imagination is full of tales of Homeric funeral pyres, you can also see why the image of bodies piled high might appeal to Johnson.
Are the denials credible?
As of now, no. Ben Wallace, the defence secretary said this morning that the story has been “categorically denied by practically everyone”. But it hasn’t - at least, on the record. That may change as the day goes on.
Overall verdict
For all these reasons, the claim that Johnson made this remark at a meeting in October is extremely plausible. And it is probably more damaging to Johnson than other claims about the consequences of his lockdown decision making.
The one qualification to this would be that, because Johnson does have a such a well-established reputation for saying outlandish and provocative things, some readers will conclude he probably didn’t meant it.
Updated
Nine out of 10 people required to self-isolate after being in contact with someone who tested positive for coronavirus said they fully adhered to the rules, PA Media reports. PA says:
Experimental data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), published this morning, found 90% of respondents reported being fully adherent to self-isolation requirements throughout their 10-day self-isolation period.
But of the respondents who did not follow self-isolation requirements, 78% reported they left the house for non-permitted reasons during their 10-day self-isolation period, the ONS said.
Of those who left their homes, 27% said they had gone to the shops for groceries, toiletries, medicine or other items, while 13% went out for outdoor recreation or exercise.
The data, collected between 1 and 10 April, also found 6% of all respondents had contact with people outside their household during their isolation period, with 57% allowing visitors into their home and 55% having contact somewhere outdoors.
In the first 24 hours after receiving a notification to start self-isolating, 96% of respondents had no contact with non-household members, while 91% had no contact with people outside their household from after the first 24 hours to the end of their self-isolation period.
SNP says Johnson should resign if he did say he would rather see 'bodies pile high' than order third lockdown
The SNP says Boris Johnson should resign if he really did say he would rather see “bodies pile high in their thousands” rather than order a third lockdown. (See 9.20am.) Ian Blackford, the SNP leader at Westminster, has issued this statement.
These comments are utterly abhorrent. If they are true, Boris Johnson has a duty to resign. The prime minister must now come to parliament to give a statement, and face questioning, on these shocking claims and the growing Tory sleaze scandal engulfing Westminster.
The public have a right to know what is going on, and why the Tory government has been handing out multi-million pound contracts, special access, tax breaks and peerages to Tory donors and friends.
The difficulty for Boris Johnson is he has lied so many times it’s impossible for anyone to trust a word he says. A full independent public inquiry is the only way to provide transparency and accountability. Those responsible must be held to account.
Outdoor hospitality and tourism attractions have reopened in Wales – and two former miners have become the first visitors to have a go on what is being billed as the world’s fastest seated zip line on the site of the former Tower colliery.
Tower colliery was the oldest continuously working deep coal mine in the UK and became a symbol of miners’ resistance in the 1990s, as workers invested their own money from redundancy payments to save the colliery from closure in 1994.
But it finally closed in 2008 and has been transformed into an outdoor adventure centre and former miners Anthony Green and Jason Donovan were the first members of the public to try the zip wire, which is called the Phoenix and travels at up to 70mph.
Green said:
I have some wonderful memories of the Tower colliery. Starting as a mining craft apprentice in 1981, I went on to do a range of roles there from catching rats, to working with explosives and eventually becoming a mining official. My proudest moment however, was of course being part of the miners buyout in 1994 which showed the power of unity at such a challenging time.
Updated
Speaker grants urgent question on ministerial code
There are two urgent questions in the Commons today.
🚨 Two UQs and two statements from 3.35pm:
— Labour Whips (@labourwhips) April 26, 2021
UQ – @alisonthewliss to@ask @michaelgove to update the House on the Ministerial Code
UQ – Andrew Mitchell to ask @DominicRaab to make a statement on reductions in the ODA budget
If Michael Gove does reply to the ministerial code UQ from the SNP’s Alison Thewliss, the exchanges should be fascinating. Gove has been very close to Dominic Cummings, who worked for him when Gove was education secretary, and Gove was also at the meeting where Johnson allegedly said he would rather see bodies pile up than order a third lockdown. But Gove could decide to despatch a junior Cabinet Office minister to respond instead.
In his interview with the Today programme Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, insisted that Boris Johnson was not sleazy. Wallace said:
Do I think the prime minister is sleazy? No, I don’t.
Do I think the prime minister is an absolutely first-class leader who has led this country in a pandemic, and let’s not forget, while we are getting into Oscar-type gossip columns - there is an awful lot of gossip going around ....
[Johnson] paid out of his own money to refurbish the flat. He paid for his flat. What I do know is that the prime minister has absolutely been focused on delivering during the pandemic.
Yesterday the Observer published an Opinium poll suggesting that nearly four voters in every 10 view Johnson as mostly or wholly corrupt.
The perception that Boris Johnson, and more broadly the government as a whole, could be corrupt is apparent amongst a sizeable minority of the public. Although it does not apply to all ministers, such as Sunak, who is generally seen as clean and honest.https://t.co/ITFdSFuj4X pic.twitter.com/wVFfPVX3Ll
— Opinium (@OpiniumResearch) April 24, 2021
Updated
Gavin Barwell, who was chief of staff to Theresa May when she was prime minister, told Times Radio this morning that the briefing war between Boris Johnson and his former chief adviser Dominic Cummings had the potential to be “extremely destabilising”.
At the end of last week Johnson told LBC in an interview that he did not think “people give a monkey’s” about issues like who was to blame for No 10 leaks. Yesterday Liz Truss, the international trade secretary, said the claims made by Cummings in his blog on Friday were just “a complete load of Westminster tittle tattle that people don’t care about”. But Barwell said it was a mistake to dismiss the importance of these matters. He said:
I heard Liz Truss yesterday dismissing all this as tittle tattle. Of course it is true that most people are not that interested in who did what ... But it is actually really important for good government. When you get a culture of leaks there is an inevitable instinct to shrink down the number of people in the room and that is not good for good government.
Barwell said he also found it surprising that the so-called “chatty rat” leak investigation (into who leaked news about the November lockdown) was still going on. Referring to the inquiry that led to Gavin Williamson being sacked as defence secretary (a rare example of a Westminster leak inquiry that produced a result), Barwell said:
My own experience working for Theresa when we had a very serious leak from the National Security Council and she asked the cabinet secretary to conduct a very aggressive inquiry to find who was responsible is that actually it only took a matter of days to go through everybody’s phones and email communication, so this has been going for four or five months now and I think MPs will want to know why it has taken so long and where it has got to.
It is difficult to say that [why the leak inquiry has taken so long] from the outside but it just surprises me, given my own experience of these things in the past, that we haven’t had an outcome.
In his blog on Friday, Cummings implied that the “chatty rat” leak inquiry was being conducted in a similar manner to the Williamson one. He said it was using “more invasive methods than are usually applied to leak inquiries because of the seriousness of the leak”.
Updated
The health minister Nadine Dorries has also described the claim that Boris Johnson told colleagues he would rather see “bodies pile high” than order a third lockdown as “an outright lie”. She posted this on Twitter.
This is an outright lie. Not one named source or substantiated fact.
— Nadine Dorries 🇬🇧 #StayAlert (@NadineDorries) April 26, 2021
Days before Hartlepool by election and a wide set of local/PCC/Mayoral elections.
It’s mendacious, vexatious co ordinated gossip given in order to negatively influence the outcome
https://t.co/t6VfMbexSe
Dorries was not at the meeting where the remark is alleged to have been made, but she is an enthusiastic supporter of the prime minister.
Updated
Minister denies PM said he’d rather ‘bodies pile high’ than have third lockdown
Good morning. It is well known that Boris Johnson was reluctant to order all three lockdowns - in the case of the second one in particular, waiting weeks before agreeing to the move recommended by his scientific advisers – and there is strong evidence that tens of thousands of deaths might have been avoided if the government had locked down much more promptly on each occasion. But the public has been understanding (no one is pretending that Johnson faced easy choices), and the polls suggest his lockdown record has done little to damage his standing with the public.
But this morning the Daily Mail has published a story presenting this story with a new twist. It is by Simon Walters, the journalist who has broken most of the stories about Johnson trying to use Tory donors to pay for the refurbishment of the Downing Street flat (so as to avoid having to pay himself) and it is assumed at Westminster that it is the latest anti-Johnson broadside from Dominic Cummings, the PM’s former chief adviser who is now engaged in a vicious briefing war with his former boss. The key allegation is that in October, as Johnson gave in to pressure from colleagues to order the second lockdown, he made a particularly tasteless comment about future lockdown policy. Walters writes:
[Johnson] agreed to fresh restrictions but his frustration is said to have boiled over after the crucial meeting at No 10 in October. ‘No more fucking lockdowns – let the bodies pile high in their thousands!’ he is alleged to have raged.
In the Mail it is “****ing lockdowns”, but we reckon Guardian readers are less squeamish than their Mail counterparts about the f-word.
MAIL: Boris: ‘Let the bodies pile high in their thousands’ #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/zCq9d7Jm4I
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) April 25, 2021
This morning Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, who was doing the media round for No 10, said this was not true. He said:
Look, it is not true, it has been categorically denied by practically everyone. We are getting into the sort of comedy chapter now of these gossip stories - unnamed sources, by unnamed advisers talking about unnamed events. None of this is serious. The prime minister has been utterly focused on delivering, alongside cabinet colleagues, the response to Covid.
In fact, although the story has been denied, those denials have come from shadowy No 10 sources. We have not yet had on-the-record denials from Johnson, or from anyone else at the meeting where the remark was supposed to have been made.
The alleged remark, if true, does not tell us anything new about Johnson’s view of lockdown as policy. But it would tell us something new about his lack of concern for people dying as a result of his actions, and that is potentially very damaging. Labour is demanding a statement from Johnson on this as soon as possible. A party spokesperson said:
If this report is true, then these are truly shocking and sickening comments from Boris Johnson. It is hard to imagine how families who have lost loved ones to Covid will feel reading them. Boris Johnson must make a public statement as soon as possible in his response to this report.
Here is the agenda for the day.
12pm: Downing Street is due to hold its lobby briefing.
12pm: Mark Sedwill and Gus O’Donnell, who are both former cabinet secretaries and now crossbench peers, give evidence to the Lords constitution committee about the cabinet manual.
2.15pm: Simon Case, the current cabinet secretary, gives evidence to the Commons public administration and constitutional affairs committee about the work of the Cabinet Office.
Johnson and Sir Keir Starmer are both on election visits today, and so they should be giving media interviews.
Covid is the issue dominating UK politics this year and sometimes Politics Live will be largely or wholly devoted to coronavirus. But I will be covering non-Covid politics too, like the Johnson/Dominic Cummings briefing war, and - depending on what seems most important and most interesting to readers - sometimes these stories will take precedence.
For global coronavirus news, do read our global live blog.
I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.
If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
Updated
