“TRYING to delegitimise the committee and its members is wrong…It’s pure Trump.”

North Dorset MP Simon Hoare has lambasted members of his own Conservative party after several questioned the legitimacy of a committee investigating the actions of former prime minister Boris Johnson.

The Commons Privileges Committee is – at the request of MPs – investigating whether Mr Johnson misled the House when making comments in relation to the ‘partygate’ scandal, when it was revealed Downing Street had been involved in numerous breaches of lockdown rules during the Covid pandemic.

More than 100 people – including Boris Johnson and then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak – received police fines over Downing Street gatherings deemed to have broken the rules, including leaving parties and a birthday gathering held for the then-PM.

On April 21 last year, the House of Commons passed a motion calling for the Uxbridge MP to be investigated by the committee for having potentially misled parliament.

An MP deemed to have misled the House faces a range of sanctions, including a potential ban from attending Parliament, depending on the severity of the incidents concerned.

The committee is investigating whether a. the Commons was misled, b. if it was, whether that constituted a contempt of parliament, and c. if it was misled, how serious was the potential contempt.

An interim report by the committee said it was also considering whether any misleading statement by Mr Johnson was ‘inadvertent, reckless or intentional’.

However, despite the investigation being sanctioned by MPs, several Johnson loyalists have branded it a ‘kangaroo court’ and ‘partial and unfair’.

On March 16, Mr Hoare questioned Leader of the House, Penny Mordaunt (Con, Portsmouth North), about such comments.

He asked whether she agreed the committee ‘should be free and unfettered to get on with their work and free of interference or intimidation?’.

The leader agreed, promising a ‘very dim view’ would be taken of anyone attempting to prevent the committee carrying out its work, or who interferes in the probe.
“They need to be permitted to get on with their work without fear or favour,” she told the Commons.

“And I would also remind honourable and right honourable members in this House that this House asked them to do this work. We referred this matter to the committee for them to consider.

“We asked them to do this work and to do it well and they should be left to get on with this.

“That is the will of this house and I think a very dim view will be taken of either any member who tries to prevent them from carrying out this serious work, or anyone from outside this house that interferes, and on a personal level, an even dimmer view will be taken of anyone from the ‘other place’ (the House of Lords) who attempts to do similar.”

Mr Johnson gave evidence to the committee on March 22.

As he answered questions, MP Jacob Rees-Mogg (Con, North East Somerset) appeared to question the legitimacy of the investigation.

“Boris is doing very well against the marsupials,” he tweeted.

And that night, on his programme on the GB News channel, Mr Rees-Mogg said the committee was behaving ‘in a way that seems to me to be partial and unfair’.

Fellow MP and staunch Johnson ally Nadine Dorries (Con, Mid Bedfordshire) went further, claiming in a promotional video for her show on Talk TV that the committee had ‘decided early on to find him guilty’.

She went on to claim the committee ‘knew that they had not a shred of evidence to prove that he misled with intent’, that ‘Boris Johnson will be found guilty by this kangaroo court’ and that such a verdict would be a ‘disgraceful and possibly unlawful conclusion with serious reputational consequences’.

The comments came despite reports MPs were warned against intimidating the committee by Speaker of the House of Commons, Lindsay Hoyle.

“I would like to remind you that interference with or intimidation of a committee is potentially a contempt of the House and restraint is appropriate while the committee’s work continues,” the speaker reportedly wrote.

And Mr Hoare has also called out the comments by committee critics – calling actions to deligitimise the committee ‘pure Trump’ in reference to former US president Donald Trump, who famously brands any investigation of his actions a ‘witch hunt’.

Mr Hoare said: “Trying to delegitimise the committee and its members is wrong.

“It undermines democracy and the workings of the Commons. It’s pure Trump.

“You have to ask what they might do, having said all they’ve said, were the committee to exonerate Mr Johnson?”

The committee is set to release its findings in a report to the House of Commons in the coming weeks.

MPs will then have to vote on accepting the findings, and on any sanction of Mr Johnson, should he be found to have misled parliament.