Downing Street parties: Sue Gray report could come this week as police signal no objection – live updates

From ITV’s Anushka Asthana

Conor Burns, a Northern Ireland minister and one of the arch Johnson loyalists in government, told BBC News that, with the Covid pandemic easing, the PM would “relish getting back to the domestic agenda”. He also said he thought Boris Johnson would see off the threat to his leadership. He said:

I believe that there will not be a vote of confidence, I believe that Boris Johnson will be prime minister for many years ahead, and I believe that Boris Johnson will win the next general election.

The lack of doubt on show from the Johnson Praetorian Guard today (see Jacob Rees-Mogg this morning at 11.51am for another example) is certainly a notch or two beyond what we have heard from them in the past. But their public certainty is probably in inverse proportion to the confidence they feel in private about the PM’s chances of survival.

ITV’s Robert Peston has also been told that the Sue Gray report is set for publication within the next 24 hours.

Pippa Crerar, the Daily Mirror’s political editor, says No 10 is expected to get the Sue Gray report tonight.

No 10 has always said it expects to release the report to MPs, and to the public, soon after receiving it from Gray and her team.

Opposition parties are renewing their calls for the Sue Gray report to be published in full this week.

Kirsten Oswald, the SNP’s deputy leader at Westminster, said:

Sue Gray’s report cannot be kicked into the long grass while the Metropolitan police conduct their investigation. There is nothing stopping Ms Gray’s report from being published as planned, given that the Metropolitan police has not raised any objections.

And this is from Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dem home affairs spokesman.

At the afternoon lobby briefing the PM’s spokesman denied claims that No 10 wanted to delay publication of parts of the Sue Gray report. He told reporters:

I have seen reports suggesting that we were seeking to prevent the publication and that is not accurate.

(Actually, those reports were based on what Downing Street itself was saying this morning. See 12.55pm.)

But, in terms of what would be published, the spokesman said this was unresolved. He said:

There are discussions still ongoing between the investigations team and the police. That still needs to be worked through both in relation to what may or may not be published and the ongoing work of both the police and the investigation.

At the afternoon lobby briefing No 10 insisted that it was not trying to block publication of the Sue Gray report. But it said that discussions between the police and the inquiry team were still ongoing as to what could be published.

And the Times is now reporting this as definite. “Sue Gray, the civil servant investigating lockdown breaking parties in Downing Street, still intends to publish her report this week despite a police investigation into potential criminality,” Fiona Hamilton, Oliver Wright and Steven Swinford report in their story (paywall). They go on:

Whitehall sources said that Gray had cleared publication with the Metropolitan Police and plans to hand it over to Boris Johnson later this week.

They added that while the final decision on whether to publish would be in the hands of the prime minister they expected that it would be released in full.

The Sun’s Harry Cole also thinks we now may get the whole of the Sue Gray report this week (as originally expected at the start of the day).

John McTernan, who worked for Tony Blair in Downing Street at the time of the cash-for-honours investigation (see 12.26pm), has posted a thread on Twitter with some advice for No 10 staffers who get questioned by the police. It starts here.

Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader, has renewed his call for Boris Johnson to resign. This is from the BBC’s Glenn Campbell.

The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg is getting the same steer that Sky’s Sam Coates has been getting. (See 3.19pm.)

Despite what No 10 said at the lobby briefing (see 12.55pm) and Michael Ellis, the Cabinet Office minister, told MPs (see 12.41pm), Sam Coates from Sky News says he has been told that the Sue Gray report may now be published in full – and that the plan to publish the findings about the non-criminal No 10 events first, but to leave the findings about the events being investigated by the police until later (see 12.55pm) has been shelved.

Coates told on Sky News that publishing the full report was an option, but that it was not clear yet how probable an option it was.

The terms of reference (pdf) for the Gray investigation say:

As with all internal investigations, if during the course of the work any evidence emerges of behaviour that is potentially a criminal offence, the matter will be referred to the police and the Cabinet Office’s work may be paused.

No 10 seems to have been treating this as evidence that publication of the findings relevant to the Met inquiry should be paused.

But the wording only says the Gray inquiry “may” have to be paused on these grounds.

The wording also talks about criminal offences. A breach of lockdown rules dealt with via a fixed-penalty notice (a fine) would not count as a criminal offence; for example, it would not have to be declared to an employer. (Dame Cressida Dick, the Met police commissioner, made it clear this morning that these were the sort of offences that would result in a fine – see 11.03am.)

And the whole rationale for pausing a civil service investigation would be to avoid prejudicing a police inquiry and a possible court case. But the Met has signalled that it does not expect these matters to end up in court, and it is hard to see how the investigation would prejudice the police inquiry because the police inquiry seems to be almost entirely based on what the Cabinet Office has discovered.