No evidence Prime Minister was serial COVID-19 law-breaker, Metropolitan Police chief says

There was "no straightforward evidence" that Prime Minister Boris Johnson had breached COVID-19 laws many times in Downing Street, the Metropolitan Police's acting chief has said.

Sir Stephen House said the decisions made by officers investigating lockdown parties at Number 10 were correct.

The Metropolitan Police issued 126 fines to eighty-three people, including the Prime Minister.

But the force has faced calls to explain why Boris Johnson did not receive fines for other events he attended.

At one gathering on 13th November 2020, Boris Johnson was pictured drinking with staff in Downing Street at a leaving do for the Prime Minister’s former communications chief, Lee Cain.

The Metropolitan Police has handed out fines for COVID-19 breaches inside Number 10 on this date but not to the Prime Minister.

Boris Johnson, his wife Carrie Johnson, and Chancellor Rishi Sunak each received only one fine for attending a party thrown for the Prime Minister’s birthday in June 2020.

More details about the twelve gatherings investigated by the Metropolitan Police and others were outlined in a long-awaited report by a senior civil servant, Sue Gray.

On Thursday, appearing in front of the London Assembly's Police and Crime Committee, the Metropolitan Police's acting commissioner was asked about how the force managed the investigation and decided who should be fined.

One committee member, Labour's Unmesh Desai, asked why the Prime Minister had only received one fine "when there was straightforward evidence suggesting he had breached the law quite a few times".

In reply, Sir Stephen House said: "I don't believe there is straightforward evidence that the Prime Minister breached many other times."

He said he was personally involved in the decision-making and was confident in the outcome of the force's investigation.

"I'm not particularly concerned about what the Prime Minister thinks, I do my job without fear or favour," Sir Stephen House said, who is in post until a replacement is found for former boss Dame Cressida Dick.

Sir Stephen House was then questioned about an officer on duty in Downing Street who, according to the Sue Gray report, had seen "many people" at a "crowded and noisy" party, where "some members of staff drank excessively".

The officer had responded to a panic alarm button that was accidentally triggered on the 18th of December 2020 party.

Asked why the officer had not challenged the partygoers over COVID-19 breaches, Sir Stephen House said Downing Street officers were there for security and not to "police what goes on inside the building".

"And I don't believe that the officer that we're talking about felt that they were seeing something that necessarily breached coronavirus regulations," Sir Stephen House said.

Later, he said one challenge officers faced was working out which gatherings were work-related, and which ones were not.

"I think it's impossible to expect an officer, walking through a room with a lot of people in it, to work out whether or not these people are breaching coronavirus regulations when it's taken a team of experienced detectives many weeks to do the same thing," Sir Stephen House said.

Setting out how the Metropolitan Police conducted its investigation, Sir Stephen House said officers examined "every case", looking at "hundreds of documents, including emails, electronic door logs, diary entries, witness statements, photographs, CCTV images, and we sent questionnaires to people who we felt may have breached legislation".

Officers looked at "each individual's activity" at each event, how long it lasted and the amount of time an attendee spent there, Sir Stephen House said.

As part of its investigation, the Metropolitan Police sent out questionnaires to suspected COVID-19 law-breakers but there were no interviews under caution.

Sir Stephen House said the "vast majority" of people returned their questionnaires but did not say who did not and denied it had hampered the force's investigation of them.

He said the criteria for this decision-making process were included in a letter sent to the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.

Earlier this week, Sadiq Khan asked the Metropolitan Police for a "detailed explanation" of how it decided who to fine during its investigation into lockdown parties at Number 10.