Markus Andrews

Civil servants allegedly tried to waterdown Sue Gray’s report into Partygate and pressured her to remove names, according to reports. Samantha Jones, the permanent secretary at No 10, reportedly discussed who should be publicly named in the report with MS Gray’s team ahead of publication.According to the The Sunday Times, Ms Gray was lobbied to make changes on Tuesday evening by Ms Jones, cabinet secretary Simon Case, and permanent secretary in the Cabinet Office Alex Chisholm. The report alleged that up to 30 names were scheduled to be included in the report, but in the end only 15 people featured.A Whitehall source told the paper: “On Tuesday night, one last attempt was made to persuade her [Gray] to omit names from the report, but she made it plain to them the only way that was going to happen was if they issued her with an instruction.”Certain details were also removed from the report, according to The Sunday Times, including references to music being played at an “Abba party” in the prime minister’s flat and the leaving times of the attendees. Details about a leaving party for Hannah Young, a No 10 private secretary, were reportedly removed. Downing Street firmly denies that any details were tweaked in the report. A No 10 source said: “It is untrue that anyone on the political side saw anything in advance or sought to influence it.”A Downing Street official also claimed that Ms Gray had investigated whether two couples were caught having sex in No 10 on the night Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain left in November 2020. Ms Gray reportedly couldn’t find enough evidence about the alleged incident to put it in the report. In her report, the senior civil servant said that top officials, including Boris Johnson “must bear responsibility for this culture”. She said that the public would be “dismayed” by a series of breaches of Covid regulations in Downing Street. “It is also the case that some of their involvement in some of these events was permitted given the attendance of senior leaders. The senior leadership at the centre, both political and official, must bear responsibility for this culture,” she added. Ms Gray was due to investigate an “Abba party” that allegedly took place in the prime ministers’ Downing Street flat on the night of Lee Cain’s leaving do. However the civil servant said that after the Metropolitan Police closed their investigation into the gathering she decided that “it was not appropriate or proportionate” to continue her own probe into the incident. More

Labour will push for a vote on the government’s decision to change the ministerial code in the wake of the publication of Sue Gray’s report.Prime minister Boris Johnson faced significant backlash for the move, with the opposition party arguing that it “waters down” rules and “gives the green light to corruption”. Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner labelled Mr Johnson a “tinpot despot” who could not be trusted. No 10 said the new version of the ministerial code has the backing of the Committee on Standards in Public Life and the adviser on ministerial interests. Under the new policy, ministers found to have breached the code of conduct will no longer be expected to resign or face being fired, instead they would have to apologise or have their salary temporarily suspended.The independent ethics chief, Lord Christopher Geidt, has also been blocked from launching his own investigations into possible violations, and will now require consent from Mr Johnson.When Parliament returns next week, Sir Keir Starmer plans to use an opposition day to encourage Conservative MPs to vote against the prime minister’s changes. More

In the three days since the publication of the senior civil servant Sue Gray’s report into lockdown-busting parties in No 10, there has been a drip-feed of Tory MPs condemning the scandal and calling on Boris Johnson to resign.The former cabinet minister David Davis, who dramatically told the prime minister to step aside in January in the House of Commons, claimed on Saturday that discontent was spreading across the party’s ranks.With a major poll showing the party could hold on to just three out of 88 key battleground seats at the next election, the senior Conservative said many of his colleagues “frankly see their own seats disappearing in many cases”.He is one of 24 MPs (eight of them since the publication of Ms Gray’s report) who have publicly stated they no longer support the prime minister, with over a dozen of them having confirmed submitting letters of no confidence.Under the party’s rules, a confidence vote will only be triggered if 15 per cent of the parliamentary party – 54 Tory MPs in the current parliament – submit a letter of to the chairman of the Conservatives’ 1922 backbench committee, Sir Graham Brady.Sir Graham has a reputation in Westminster for keeping the true figure of no confidence letters a closely guarded secret and he will only publicly disclose the figure if the threshold is passed – traditionally after giving the Tory leader advanced warning.The 1922 committee, which is in charge of running leadership contests, will then ask all Tory MPs to cast their vote in a secret ballot in the corridors of Westminster. If a vote is called, Mr Johnson would have to secure the confidence of 180 MPs – 50 per cent of the parliamentary party – to remain as Conservative leader and prime minister. If he falls, the party will then trigger a leadership contest. Technically, if a Tory leader wins the vote, their position is secured for at least 12 months. Whether they can survive that period politically is another question: six months after emerging victorious from a confidence vote, Theresa May announced her resignation outside No 10.While many in Westminster believe a confidence vote in Mr Johnson is a matter of when, not if, it is not a foregone conclusion and the timing is highly unpredictable. Besides Sir Graham, no individual really knows the true number of no confidence letters that have been submitted. Many MPs will not announce whether they have written to the 1922 committee, and others may have wthdrawn letters without publicly announcing.There also appears to be no evidence to suggest the statements – largely published on MPs’ websites – are coordinated. Take the MP Steve Brine. The former health minister published a statement on Wednesday on his website, saying he had submitted a letter of no confidence. It wasn’t advertised on social media and no one seemed to notice until Saturday. More

Cleaners delivered a stinging rebuke to Boris Johnson’s government at a Downing Street protest on Friday evening, accusing the cabinet of looking “down on us like we’re the dirt that we clean”.The protest was called after Sue Gray’s report into illegal parties at Downing Street found that No 10 staff had treated cleaning and security staff “unacceptably” on several occasions.Workers told The Independent that the problems with respect went beyond No 10 and raised issues relating to insecure, outsourced contracts and low pay. More

A former Labour minister has appeared to suggest that voters in the Tiverton and Honiton by-election should consider going Liberal Democrat in a bid to oust the Conservatives.Ben Bradshaw – who was culture secretary between 2009 and 2010 – said his party should fight for every vote in the seat. But, in what some will regard as a coded message, he added: “What some Labour members and activists don’t always appreciate is that a lot of Conservative voters, if they want to give the government a kicking will vote Liberal Democrat but they wouldn’t vote Labour…“So if we have a joint purpose of wanting to send the prime minister a message and ultimately defeat this government in a general election then I think there are very good prospects of a Lib Dem victory there.”The race for Tiverton and Honiton – a sprawling, largely rural Devon constituency – prompted by the resignation of Neil Parish who admitted watching porn in the House of Commons, is being widely touted as a two-horse race. The Tories currently enjoy a 24,239 majority and have held the seat since it was created in 1997 but the Lib Dems believe they could steal it on the back of anger about Partygate and rising living costs.Suggestions have been made that Labour will fight only a bare minimum campaign here to allow yellow candidate Richard Foord a clear run, with the Lib Dems returning the favour in Wakefield where another by-election is being held the same day.Both parties have denied such a pact.But Mr Bradshaw’s comments – initially made on Radio 4’s The Week In Westminster – will be seen as a tacit endorsement of voting tactically. More

Tens of thousands of Britain’s poorest families stand to miss out on a huge boost to their incomes next year in Rishi Sunak’s £15 billion package to ease the cost of living crisis thanks to the benefits cap.Benefits payments are set to soar by as much as 10 per cent from April, the chancellor has confirmed, but more than 120,000 households will lose out unless ministers raise the cap on how much they can receive from the state.Experts warned that unless the government acts more families, many of whom have children under five, will hit the ceiling on payments. Carl Emmerson, the deputy director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think tank, said that if ministers planned to make benefits more generous, to keep up with spiralling inflation, “the benefit cap should almost certainly increase to reflect that”. More

Boris Johnson is in “yellow card territory” after the publication of the long awaited Sue Gray report into the Partygate scandal, a government minister has said.The comments from John Glen come amid a drip-feed of no confidence letters being submitted in the prime minister’s leadership, with one former Tory cabinet minister warning that discontent was spreading in the party.Last night, Conservative MP Bob Neill became the latest to call on Mr Johnson to resign, insisting the report by the senior civil servant Ms Gray had uncovered “wholly unacceptable” behaviour in No 10 and undermined trust. More

Schools do not have to accommodate transgender pupils by addressing them by their prefered pronouns or allowing them to use gender-appropriate toilets, the attorney general has said.In an interview with The Times, cabinet minister Suella Braverman said that schools are under no legal obligation to allow transgender children to wear their prefered school uniform. She also criticised schools for their “unquestioning approach” to gender reassignment, saying they should take a “much firmer line” when it came to making provisions for transgender students. Ms Braverman also hailed Harry Potter author J K Rowling as her “heroine”, calling her “very brave, very courageous.”Ms Braverman told The Times that, because under-18s can’t legally change gender, schools are entitled to continue to treat transgender children by the gender of their birth. “A male child who says in a school that they are a trans girl, that they want to be female, is legally still a boy or a male. And schools have a right to treat them as such under the law. They don’t have to say OK, we’re going to let you change your pronoun or let you wear a skirt or call yourself a girl’s name,” she said. Ms Braverman said that same should apply to nonbinary children. She also said that girls’ toilets are protected spaces under the equalities act and schools should not allow transchildren to use them. Currently only people who are 18 or over can apply for a gender recognition certificate, which legally recognises your change of gender. The applicant also has to have lived as a transwoman or man for at least two years before applying. More