The Metropolitan Police force has issued a further 30 fines for Covid lockdown rule-breaking within Downing Street and Whitehall, with the prime minister and chancellor confirmed to be among them.
Downing Street disclosed that prime minister Boris Johnson, his wife Carrie Johnson and chancellor Rishi Sunak are among those to have received fixed penalty notices, but it has not been revealed which events the fines related to.
Nevertheless, the fine sees Johnson become the first serving UK prime minister to be sanctioned for breaking the law.
The Met’s investigation is looking into a total of 12 events, including three which the PM is known to have attended. One reported event which all three were known to have attended took place in June 2020, which was a celebration for the Johnson's birthday.
The latest raft of fines takes the total distributed to 50, after an initial 20 were issued in March.
The police have confirmed that the fines issued relate to specific breaches rather than to individuals who are adjudged to be complicit, meaning that one person could be fined more than once if deemed to have repeatedly broken the rules.
In a statement, the Met said: “As of April 12, 2022, we have made over 50 referrals for fixed penalty notices [FPNs] to the ACRO Criminal Records Office for breaches of Covid-19 regulations who following the referral issue the FPNs to the individual.
“We are making every effort to progress this investigation at speed, this includes continuing to assess significant amounts of investigative material from which further referrals may be made to ACRO.”
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has said that that the news of the fines has compromised the “honesty and integrity” of both the PM and chancellor and that they must resign.
Sir Keir said: "Britain deserves better. Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak have broken the law and repeatedly lied to the British public. They must both resign."
The Labour leader added that it was “obvious” that “widespread criminality” was allowed to take place in Downing Street during lockdown, and the Met’s latest update had “blown the prime minister’s defence out of the window” by rubbishing the notion that “all rules were complied with” in government buildings.
When reports first emerged late last year of gatherings taking place in Downing Street and Whitehall during lockdown, Johnson insisted that the guidance had always been observed.
However, the revelation that the PM and the chancellor have been fined for rule-breaking raises major questions over whether he knowingly misled Parliament.
It was Johnson who ordered an inquiry into the gatherings when media reports of them first emerged, which was conducted by civil servant Sue Gray. Her concluding report said that a failure of leadership within Downing Street had been largely responsible for enabling the parties to happen.
After Gray passed her own research into the matter on to the Met, the police opted to begin their own probe, meaning that Gray’s full unredacted report into the matter will not be disclosed until the police inquiry concludes.
After the prime minister initially faced calls to resign over the parties when the news first broke, much of the clamour for him to go had cooled, with MPs waiting on the conclusion of the police investigation and Gray’s uncensored report before declaring their position on Johnson’s future.
However, news of the PM being issued with a fine has seen much of that pressure re-applied immediately. Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said that Johnson simply "cannot continue" in post, calling for the House of Commons to be urgently recalled from its Easter recess in order for a no confidence vote to be lodged against the prime minister.
“The police have now completely shredded Johnson's claims that no laws were broken. He cannot be trusted and cannot continue as prime minister,” Sir Ed said.
Matt Fowler, one of the co-founders of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice campaign group, said that it had become “plain as day that there was a culture of boozing and rule breaching at the highest level of government while the British public was making unimaginable sacrifices” and that there is "simply no way either the prime minister or chancellor can continue".
Lobby Akinola, a spokeswoman for the campaign group, called the prime minister and chancellor "truly shameless" for having tried to "mislead the public" over the parties, adding that they "took us all [the British public] for mugs."
Image taken from Wikimedia Commons
