Boris Johnson insists Partygate leaving dos were ‘essential for work purposes’ during grilling by MPs – as it happened

• Boris Johnson faces being formally reprimanded for recklessly misleading parliament after MPs investigating the Partygate scandal denounced his “flimsy” explanations and suggested he had wrongly interpreted Covid guidance. The former prime minister was left fighting for his political career after a tetchy three-and-a-half-hour evidence session in which he repeatedly claimed No 10 parties, with alcohol and little social distancing, had been “necessary” for work purposes. Harriet Harman, chair of the privileges committee investigating whether Johnson deliberately misled MPs over lockdown gatherings, expressed dismay at the “flimsy nature” of assurances he received that events were within the rules.

• Rishi Sunak’s financial records have been released to the public on the same day as the earlier vote on the Windsor Framework and the televised inquisition of Johnson. According to the release, he paid more than £1m in tax over the past three financial years. This included paying £432,493 in the 2021/22 financial year. Between his income and capital gains, Sunak made £4,766,962 in the past three financial years. This includes £3,760,588 made from a US-based blind investment fund - for which tax was paid in the US, as well as some in the UK.

• Twenty-two Conservative MPs voted against the government on the Northern Ireland protocol deal. There were also 48 Tory MPs who did not vote.

• Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, told the World at One he would vote against the government even though he was in favour of the Stormont brake, which he said “could turn out to be useful”. He was voting against because “unfortunately” the government was treating this as a vote on the principle of the Northern Ireland protocol deal as a whole.

• The Conservative party deputy chair Lee Anderson has revealed he will be paid £100,000 a year for hosting a show on GB News, PA Media reports.

Thank you for following today’s liveblog. Here is tonight’s main story:

The Conservative party deputy chair Lee Anderson has revealed he will be paid £100,000 a year for hosting a show on GB News, PA Media reports. PA says:

The annual fee, declared in an update to the MPs’ register of interests published on Wednesday, is a significant increase on the £200 weekly payment he received for appearing as a regular on Dan Wootton’s show.

The controversial MP for Ashfield, in Nottinghamshire, became the fifth Tory MP to host a GB News show when his deal with the channel was announced on 7 March.

He joins fellow Conservatives Jacob Rees-Mogg, Esther McVey and Philip Davies, who all currently host shows. Bishop Auckland MP Dehenna Davison previously hosted a show but left when she was made a levelling up minister.

In its report earlier this month the privileges committee said that it would consider whether Boris Johnson misled the house and, if so, it would consider “whether that was inadvertent, reckless or intentional”. On the basis of that evidence session, and all the written evidence that has been released, it seems likely that Johnson will go down on recklessness.

That will be enough to trigger a sanction. But it does not have to be a suspension of 10-days or more, and it is not hard to see why the committee might opt for a lesser punishment. There has been little or no evidence to back up claims there was a conspiracy to lie to MPs. The committee will want to produce a report and recommendation acceptable to as much as the Commons as possible. And any sanction at all on a former PM like this would be unprecedented. That would serve as warning to ministers in future that they need to take their obligations to parliament a lot more seriously than Johnson.

On the whole, the committee did a good job. It is still not clear why the committee did not ask about the Abba party, but it ran to time, the questions were robust, it never became partisan and the Conservatives on the committee gave the impression that they are not minded to be intimidated by a write-in campaign organised by grassroots Johnsonite extremists.

We did not learn any great new facts. But the MPs were good at testing the robustness of Johnson’s arguments, and two exchanges were particularly revealing. First, Sir Bernard Jenkin established quite effectively that Johnson’s understanding of what the guidance actually meant was so elastic as to cover not taking any notice of the guidance at all. (See 3.08pm.) And his question about what Johnson would have said if asked at a press conference if a crowded drinks do was allowed in a workplace under the Covid guidance was one of the best of the day. Johnson’s reply was wholly unconvincing. (See 3.33pm.)

The other key exchange came when Harriet Harman expressed dismay at Johnson telling MPs all rules and guidance were followed on the basis of such “flimsy” evidence. (See 4.54pm.) If you want to locate the gravamen of the committee’s final report, it is probably in that exchange.

Johnson was curt and abrupt. He did not quite lose his temper, but it was probably a mistake to take a swipe at Harman’s integrity and it should not have taken him as long as it did to disown the “kangaroo court” smears cast out by his supporters. Normally, in circumstances like this, unabashed humility goes down best. And honesty. One of the revealing lines from him came when he said that perhaps he should have been a bit more candid with the Commons last December when asked to explain to what extent guidance was followed in Number 10. (See 4.28pm.)

Even commentators well disposed towards Johnson (like the Telegraph’s Christopher Hope) are finding it hard to pretend that was a triumph. Johnson lost his job partly as a result of Partygate, and the Brexiter Tory faction he now leads has, on the basis of today’s vote (see 3.20pm), been reduced to oddball rump of 22. When the committee has to decide what punishment is appropriate, it will take into account mitigating factors, and one reason not to trigger the recall process might be that a return to frontline politics for him seems increasingly unlikely anyway.

Sir Charles Walker (Con) goes next.

He asks about Conservative Post, the pro-Johnson website. The website has run a campaign against the privileges committee inquiry. Yet when the Commons voted to hold this inquiry, the government, led by Johnson at the time, did not oppose it.

Johnson confirms that.

Q: So it is misleading for Conservative Post to criticise Tory MPs for not opposing the inquiry.

Johnson accepts that.

Q: On 14 June 2022 there was a motion to add Harriet Harman to the committee. When the motion was put, not a single MP objected? Is that right?

Of course, says Johnson.

Q: So if MPs did have concerns about the committee, someone would have objected?

Johnson says he has said what he has said about the concern about Harman being impartial. He says he has come to the committee confident it will be impartial.

Q: Your supporters seem to want it both ways. They are hoping the committee will exonerate you. But just in case it doesn’t, they want to delegitimise us. Do you see us as a kangaroo court?

Johnson says the committee can tell from the respect he has shown it how he views it. This is the body that decides these matters. He does not think the committee can find he wittingly misled parliament.

Q: Do you regret your supporters have called the committee a kangaroo court?

Johnson says there should be no attempt to intimidate the committee.

Q: So do you regret that?

Johnson says he deprecates that term. (It is one used by Jacob Rees-Mogg just today – see 1.57am.)

Alberto Costa intervenes.

Q: Do you think the committee could be wrong, but still fair?

Johnson says it would have been “insane” for him to lie to the Commons. He says he is sure the committee will find in its favour.

Asked if he will accept it is acting in good faith if it doesn’t, Johnson says he will wait to see what it concludes.

UPDATE: Johnson said:

I think if this committee were to find me in contempt of parliament – having come and done something so utterly insane and contrary to my beliefs and my principles as to come here, to come to parliament and wittingly lie – I think that would be not only unfair, I think it would be wrong.

Turning away from the hearing for a moment, ITV’s Robert Peston has the headline figures from Rishi Sunak’s tax return.

Harriet Harman says she was in the Commons at the time when she heard him talk about his assurances. MPs thought they were serious assurances.

Yet they were from political advisers, not civil servants; the advisers had their own doubts; the assurances covered rules, not guidance; and they only covered one event, she says.

So can you see why MPs are dismayed about the “flimsy nature” of these assurance, she asks.

Johnson disputes this. He says Jack Doyle and James Slack had both given assurances about Christmas drinks event.

Johnson says Doyle did not tell him that he (Doyle) had doubts about the event.

He says if the committee tells him he cannot rely on advice from people like Doyle and Slack, it would be difficult for government to carry on.

UPDATE: Harman said:

It is a bit hard to understand what the nature of an assurance is when you’ve been there and seen it with your own eyes.

If I was going at 100mph and I saw the speedometer saying 100mph, it would be a bit odd, wouldn’t it, if I said someone assured me that I wasn’t, because it is what you’ve seen with your own eyes.

Do you actually think that we would be entitled to be a bit dismayed about the flimsy nature of this assurance when we took it at face value that these assurances amounted to something, and it looks, from what you’ve told us in answer to Mr Costa’s questions, that they did not amount to much at all.

Q: Is it right that you received no assurances that the event on 18 December 2020 complied with Covid guidance? Jack Doyle made this point in written evidence. (See 11.31am.)

Johnson says that was correct. But nobody had said anything “adverse about the guidance”, he says. (In other words, he says he was not told it was against the guidance either.)

Q: Do you accept that you were told by Martin Reynolds not to say guidance was followed at all times? (See 10.20am.)

Johnson says Reynolds was being cautious. But he was talking about social distancing at No 10, he says.

The division bell has gone off. But Harriet Harman says they don’t need to vote, and so the session continues.

Johnson says Reynolds was not saying the guidance was not being followed. They were following the guidance with mitigation.

Q: Given that you said you would take out the reference to guidance, do you think you should have corrected the record?

No, says Johnson. He says he did not think anyone had broken the guidance.

Q: In your written statement you say perfect compliance with the guidance was not necessary. If so, why did you not tell the Commons at the time?

Johnson says that is a “very good question”. As Bernard Jenkin said earlier (see 3.08pm), he says, it might have been better if he had spelt out to MPs when he meant by saying the guidance was followed at all time.

In his statement yesterday Johnson said:

It was not always possible to observe perfect social distancing. As I have explained above, that was envisaged and provided for in the guidance.

Q: Why did you not tell the Commons there had been other events in No 10?

Johnson says he did not think they were of concern, or were against the rules and guidance.

Q: The following week, the night before PMQs, ITV published the Allegra Stratton video. What did you do in the week between 1 December and 8 December to prepare for further questions on this?

Johnson says, when the Stratton video emerged, he decided he was getting “conflicting information” about what happened at the event on 18 December 2020. He asked the cabinet secretary to conduct an inquiry.

Fovargue says Lee Cain, communications director at the time, objected to the idea of having a drinks event in the No 10 garden in May 2020.

Johnson says Cain raised concerns about the optics.

Q: Why would he have been concerned about the optics if was within the rules?

Johnson says he might have been worried about people seeing it happening.

Q: Cain says now the event was purely social.

Johnson says he does not recall Cain saying that at the time.

Harriet Harman says they now want to ask about the events in May and June in 2020.

Yvonne Fovargue (Lab) is asking the questions now.

She starts with the 19 June gathering in the cabinet room – the impromptu birthday event. At least 17 people were there, she says, including his wife and interior designer.

Johnson says his wife and son were there, and a “contractor who was in the building” attended very briefly.

Q: Why did they have to be there for work purposes?

Johnson says he thought this was reasonably necessary for work purposes because he was standing at his desk, and about to have a meeting.

Q: Presumably your wife and the contractor were not attending that meeting?

Johnson says at No 10 the PM’s family have access to the building.

Q: Shouldn’t it have been obvious that they were not there?

No, says Johnson. He says the press office publicised the fact it took place. No one said it should not have taken place. And Rishi Sunak was there too, he says.

This is what Boris Johnson said to Sir Bernard Jenkin when Jenkin asked him what he would have said if he had been asked what he would say to any business that wanted to hold “unsocially distanced farewell gatherings” during lockdown.

Johnson replied:

I would have said it is up to organisations, as the guidance says, to decide how they are going to implement the guidance amongst them. Where they can’t do social distancing perfectly, they can’t maintain two metres or one metre, they are entitled to have mitigations. And we did indeed have plenty of mitigations.

(I don’t think anyone did ask during the press conferences if crowded leaving dos were OK under the rules. That is because, to most people, the answer was obvious. And although Johnson claims he would have answered in these terms, Prof Sir Chris Whitty would surely have given a very different answer.)

Twenty-two Conservative MPs voted against the government on the Northern Ireland protocol deal, the division list reveals. The full list of names is here.

There were also 48 Tory MPs who did not vote. Some of them will have had permission not to vote, but some will have been abstaining intentionally.

Jenkin asks Johnson to confirm that, the fact that people were standing close together, meant the guidance was not being followed.

Johnson does not accept that. He says the guidance allowed exemptions.

It did not mean to me that we breached the guidance. It means that we were following the guidance to the best of our ability, which was what the guidance provided for. And the guidance provides for freedoms within the practical framework of the operation, or the business, to decide how you’re going to implement the guidance.

Jenkin says, if Johnson said this to the House of Commons, instead of saying the guidance was followed at all times, they would probably not be sitting here having this inquiry.

(Johnson’s argument, also set out in his statement yesterday, seems to be that the guidance allowed you to ignore the guidance.)

Sir Bernard Jenkin (Con) is leading the questions now.

He starts by asking Johnson to confirm that he understood the “hands, face, space” guidance. Johnson confirms he did.

Jenkin asks about the photographs from the 13 November event (the Lee Cain leaving drinks). People were standing close together. Jenkin says this shows guidance was being ignored.

Johnson says, as he argued in his opening statement, it was not always possible to maintain that distancing in No 10.

This is what he said on this in his opening statement:

What was in my head, was based on my understanding of the rules and the guidance. That did not mean that I believed that social distancing was complied with perfectly. That is because I and others in the building did not believe that it was necessary or possible to have a 2-metre or after June 24 2020 1-metre electrified forcefield around every human being. Indeed, that is emphatically not what the guidance prescribes.

It specifically says that social distancing should be maintained where possible, having regard to the work environment, and it is clear that in No 10 we had real difficulties in both working efficiently and at speed and in maintaining perfect social distancing. It is a cramped, narrow, 18th-century townhouse. We had no choice but to meet, day in, day out, seven days a week, in an unrelenting battle against Covid. I had to call meetings on the spot, and to take a great many high-speed decisions.

The photo from the Cain leaving do shows Johnson appearing to toast staff with a drink. Asked about it, he said: “I believe it was absolutely essential for work purposes.”

He justified it as “necessary” because two members of staff were leaving “in potentially acrimonious circumstances”.

“I accept that perfect social distancing is not being observed but that does not mean that what we were doing is incompatible with the guidance,” he added.

Back in the Commons, the result of the Northern Ireland protocol vote has been announced. The government won by 515 votes to 29 – a majority of 486.

Assuming all or most of the eight DUP MPs voted against the government, as they said they would, that implies that just over 20 Tories voted against the government. That amounts to a moderate-sized rebellion, but not one that would wipe out the government’s majority.

We will get the full division list soon.

Johnson says some aspects of this hearing are “extremely peculiar”.

He says Harriet Haman herself has said things that are “plainly and wrongly prejudicial, or prejudge the very issue you are adjudicating”, he says.

(In most court setting, it is a brave – and not always wise – move to accuse the judge of being biased. Johnson did not make this argument in his statement yesterday, but today he is being more confrontational.)

Johnson goes on to say that this may have been part of the thrust of politics, and he acknowledges what Harman said earlier about being impartial. He says he will help her do her job.

The committee has resumed.

Boris Johnson is still making his opening statement.

He says, if the committee thinks it should have been obvious to Johnson that rules were being broken, then the committee is in effect accusing civil servants of lying about what was happening too.

And they do not have the chance to give evidence to defend themselves, he says.

The division bell has gone, summoning MPs to vote on the Northern Ireland protocol. Harman suspends the committee hearing to allow MPs to vote.

A division normally takes 15 minutes, but the committee will resume when all eight relevant MPs – the seven committee members, and Boris Johnson – are back, which could be sooner.

Johnson says people think the photographs published show him breaking the rules. That is not the case.

He says they show him giving a few words of thanks at a work event for a leaving colleage.

And they show a few people standing together, as was permitted if social distancing was not possible.

He says, if it should have been obvious to him that the rules were being broken (which is the central argument in the report published by the committee earlier last month), then it should have been obvious to other people in the building too, “including the current prime minister”.

Johnson says he wanted to included in the bundle published today by the committee evidence that would support his defence. That is “manifestly unfair”, he argues.

Johnson says he believed what he told MPs.

As soon as it was clear he was wrong, he came to the Commons and corrected the record.

He could not have corrected the earlier because he did not know what the outcome of the inquiries would be. He says he was told on a couple of occasions by Sue Gray “that she did not think the threshold of criminality had been reached”.

I was deeply shocked when fines were issued, not least because I had been told on a couple of occasions at least, by Sue Gray, that she did not think the threshold of criminality had been reached.

(It is not clear from this whether he means Gray told him that she thought he did not commit a criminal offence, or whether she told him she thought no one committed a criminal offence.)

Boris Johnson says a vote will take place soon. He suggests they wait for that until he starts his opening statement.

Harman declines his suggestion, and invites him to proceed.

Johnson starts his opening statement.

I am here to say to you, hand on heart, I did not lie to the house.

UPDATE: Johnson said:

As you have said chair, the purpose of this inquiry is not to reopen so-called partygate.

It is to discover whether or not I lied to parliament, willingly misled colleagues and the country about what I knew and believed about those gatherings when I said the rules and the guidance had been followed at No 10.

I’m here to say to you hand on heart that I did not lie to the House.

When those statements were made, they were made in good faith and on the basis on what I honestly knew and believed at the time.

Harman says the committee will not reach conclusions until it has heard evidence from Boris Johnson.

She asks the clerk to administer the oath to Boris Johnson.

He swears with his hand on the Bible that the evidence he will give will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons speaker, urged MPs today not to interfere with the privileges committee process. (See 11.25am.) In his interview with the World at One Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, certainly ignored the spirit of what Hoyle was saying, if not the letter, by saying the committee “makes kangaroo courts look respectable”. He told the programme:

I think [the committee] makes kangaroo courts look respectable.

I think Harriet Harman’s position is absurd ... that after Chris Bryant recused himself, quite rightly, she should not possibly have taken on the role when she’d expressed her view clearly beforehand.

Whatever happens in the privileges committee, he will win in the court of public opinion.

Rees-Mogg was referring to various tweets posted by Harman last year that critics argue show she has already made up her mind about this case.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, told the World at One he would be voting against the government today even though he was in favour of the Stormont brake, which he said “could turn out to be useful”. He was voting against because “unfortunately” the government was treating this as a vote on the principle of the Northern Ireland protocol deal as a whole.

Echoing the argument used by Boris Johnson overnight (see 9.40am), Rees-Mogg said that Rishi Sunak’s deal “solidifies some of the problems with the [existing] protocol”. He said it would have been better for the government to proceed with the Northern Ireland protocol bill.

When it was put to him that Steve Baker, the Northern Ireland minister, said Johnson was at risk of becoming a “pound shop Nigel Farage” for taking this view (see 10.51am), Rees-Mogg said he took that as a compliment because Poundshop was “a very good, successful business, providing services that the British people need”.

Traditionally crime has been a Tory issue. But it is now one where Labour has a narrow lead over the Conservatives as the party that would handle it best, and what’s surprising is not that Keir Starmer raised it today, but that he does not do so more often. Particularly because of his record as a former DPP, it feels like easy territory for him.

What was new was Starmer’s decision to combine an attack on crime with the suggestion that Rishi Sunak is out of touch and Londoncentric, and that he should “get out of Westminster” more. This a line that we hear more usually when the Conservatives are deploying it against Starmer, and to his credit Sunak retaliated effectively, pointing out that his North Yorkshire constituency is a lot further from Westminster than Starmer’s north London one.

Tory MPs loved this, but in the wider public arena it is hard to see Sunak winning an “in touch, man of the people” contest with Starmer. He might have a house in Yorkshire, but he is not a northerner, does not sound like one, and many people now know that his family is richer than the king’s. Starmer does not easily win this contest either; his upbringing was a lot less privileged than Sunak’s, but because he is a knight and a barrister, a lot of people assume he is posh. But Starmer can at least neutralise this as a Tory attack line, and that is what he was doing today.

Sunak’s MPs also enjoyed his riposte about Sue Gray. It worked in the chamber, but this is the ultimate “inside the beltway” argument that does not resonate more widely.

To win the crime argument, the Tories normally rely on attacking Labour for voting against tougher sentences. In the past that might have worked. But with prosecution and conviction rates for some crimes now so low, this response does not carry much force any more and that showed when Sunak tried it today. As Starmer explained, if you want someone to serve a long jail sentence, you have to catch them first.

The European Research Group, the caucus which represents hardline Tory Brexiters, has said it is advising its members to vote against Rishi Sunak’s Northern Ireland protocol deal today, Newsnight’s Nicholas Watt reports.

The ERG does not publish a list of its members, and does not say how many there are, but several dozen Tories are closely associated with it.

Boris Johnson told the Sue Gray inquiry that he did not see it as being against Covid rules to work in the No 10 garden while having a bottle of wine, the evidence released by the privileges committee today reveals. Johnson said:

I would encourage people into the garden for the pandemic.

I felt it would be wrong to stop people going into the garden.

It is democratic and conducive to staff wellbeing – where to go to draw the line?

When you are in the garden and in a meeting it was OK to have a bottle of wine accompanied by alcohol in moderation.

Certainly not against the rules as I understand them.

Turning back to the Northern Ireland protocol deal vote for a moment, Steve Baker, the Northern Ireland minister, has said that Boris Johnson risks being remembered as a “pound shop Nigel Farage” for his stance on the Windsor framework.

Baker said that reviving the Northern Ireland protocol bill, Johnson’s declared alternative to Rishi Sunak’s deal (see 9.40am), would “wreck our relations with the European Union and damage our standing internationally”. Sky’s Sam Coates has posted the full quote on Twitter.

Liz Truss has not publicly called for the Northern Ireland protocol bill to be revived. But, in a briefing to journalists this morning, a source familiar with her thinking said that “as the instigator of the Northern Ireland protocol bill” (she introduced it as foreign secretary) she felt that Sunak’s deal did not satisfactorily resolve the problems thrown up by the protocol.

In its report earlier this month the privileges committee said there was evidence that Boris Johnson sometimes used to join the regular Friday night drinks events in the No 10 press office. The report said that information came from evidence submitted to the committee, but it did not supply the quote.

Now we’ve got it. It is attributed to a No 10 official, who said that Johnson could have stopped these gathering if he wanted to. The official said:

The former prime minister often saw and joined these gatherings, either he was invited by Spads [special advisers] or spotted them whilst walking up to his flat.

The route he took down the corridor looks straight into the press room and vestibule so it’s impossible not to see.

He had the opportunity to shut them down but joined in, made speeches, had a drink with staff.

He could have taken the issue up with Martin Reynolds, his principal private secretary, to shut them down.

He could see what was happening and allowed the culture to continue.

In his statement yesterday Johnson said that he could not properly respond to the evidence that he sometimes joined Friday night drinks in the press office because the committee had not set out the allegation in detail. He said:

The fourth report contains an opaque reference to Friday night “press pffice gatherings” which I am said to have “occasionally joined” (at §21). No further detail is provided, and no such specific events are identified by the committee. Insofar as any allegation is made by the committee, it is incumbent on the committee to make it so that I can respond to it. That is particularly so if the committee are referring to an event that has never previously been identified or investigated by Sue Gray or the Metropolitan police.

In his evidence yesterday Boris Johnson revealed that his principal private secretary, advised him to take out a reference to all the Covid guidance being followed in No 10 from a script he was going to use at PMQs on 8 December 2021.

Johnson’s evidence repeatedly stressed the difference between rules and guidance. He did tells MPs that both the rules and the guidance were followed, but the document he published yesterday implied he accepts that the claim about the guidance being followed all the time was more questionable.

Today the privileges committee has published the full quote from Reynolds in its bundle.

Reynolds has the wrong date; this PMQs was on the 8 December.

At PMQs Johnson ignored the advice saying he should take out the reference to guidance and told MPs: “The guidance was followed and the rules were followed at all times.”

The new evidence also shows that Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, says that he never told Boris Johnson that Covid rules and guidance were followed at all time in Downing Street, and that he never assured him no parties were held.

Case also said he was not aware of anyone else giving Johnson these assurances.

He gave these answers in evidence to the committee.

As cabinet secretary, Case is the most senior civil servant in No 10. But he is not necessarily the person who briefs the PM most regularly, or whom Johnson would have relied on most for a briefing before PMQs.

The bundle of evidence published by the privileges committee this morning is full of interesting material. Here is a passage showing an exchange between Jack Doyle, the director of communications at the time, and an official when they were discussing how to respond to the first media inquiry, from Pippa Crerar (then at the Mirror, now the Guardian’s political editor) about Partygate.

“I don’t know what we say about the flat,” Doyle said.

That is a reference to the so-called Abba party in the Downing Street flat, which involved Abba music being played so loud that it could be heard in the No 10 press office several floors below. Carrie Johnson, Boris’s wife, was reportedly celebrating the departure of Dominic Cummings with friends.

Sue Gray did not properly investigate this for her report, and Johnson himself only made one oblique reference to it in his evidence yesterday.

We knew that Boris Johnson would not be voting for Rishi Sunak’s Northern Ireland protocol deal. He said so in a speech earlier this month. But to vote against, as he has said he will do today, makes his rebellion much more serious.

What is even more provocative is the reason he has given for voting against. In a statement given overnight to Daily Telegraph, he said:

The proposed arrangements would mean either that Northern Ireland remained captured by the EU legal order – and was increasingly divergent from the rest of the UK – or they would mean that the whole of the UK was unable properly to diverge and take advantage of Brexit.

That is not acceptable. I will be voting against the proposed arrangements today. Instead, the best course of action is to proceed with the Northern Ireland protocol bill, and make sure that we take back control.

The Northern Ireland protocol bill is the legislation that would allow the UK government to ignore parts of the protocol unilaterally. Many lawyers argued that it was illegal under international law, because it would involve the UK breaking a treaty it has signed.

Johnson introduced the bill when he was prime minister, and he has argued that the threat of British unilateral action made the EU more inclined to negotiate. Sunak has now abandoned the bill.

But proposing bringing it back, Johnson is not just arguing for tweaks to the deal that has been negotiated. He is in effect saying that it should be ripped up, and that Britain should revive the threat to just ignore the treaty with the EU that it agreed in 2019 (when he himself was PM).

This goes much further than what most other Tory or DUP critics of the deal have said, and, if it were ever implemented, would ignite diplomatic war with Brussels.

The Commons privileges committee has now published a bundle of evidence that Boris Johnson and the MPs questioning him may refer to during today’s session. It runs to 110 pages and it’s here.

In a statement the committee says:

The documents comprise the evidence and materials that will be referred to in the course of oral questioning by MPs. Much of the material has already been previously published, including in the committee’s fourth report.

All evidence has already been shared with the witness two weeks ago, in unredacted form. The documents published this morning are materials that the committee and Mr Johnson have selected, that will be referred to in the course of the oral evidence session later today. The committee is now publishing these materials for the benefit of those following the oral evidence session so that they’re able to follow proceedings accordingly.

Liz Truss will join Boris Johnson in voting against Rishi Sunak’s Northern Ireland protocol deal today, PA Media is reporting, quoting a source close to Truss.

Truss is understood to believe the Windsor framework deal does not “satisfactorily resolve the issues thrown up by” the Northern Ireland protocol and “almost fatally impinges” on the UK’s ability to diverge from EU rules and regulations.

Good morning. Does it matter if ministers don’t tell the truth to parliament? In theory the answer is yes, and ever since John Profumo lied to MPs about his relationship with Christine Keeler, Erskine May, the parliamentary rulebook, has been explicit about misleading the Commons being a potential contempt of parliament. But has parliament got the will and the means to enforce this? That is what today’s privileges committee hearing with Boris Johnson is really all about.

For more background, you can read all our Partygate coverage here, and my colleague Archie Bland has a good one-stop summary of what to expect here.

Some reports say the Johnson hearing could last for up to five hours, and we’ve also got PMQs. But that’s not all. The God of News is particularly bountiful today, and we have also got a vote on Rishi Sunak’s Northern Ireland protocol deal, with confirmation overnight that Johnson (him again) will be voting against. My colleague Aletha Adu has the details.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9am: The Commons privileges committee publishes a bundle of evidence relevant to its inquiry into Johnson.

12pm: Rishi Sunak faces Keir Starmer at PMQs.

After 12.45pm: MP begin the debate on regulations implementing the Stormont brake part of the Windsor framework, the revised version of the Northern Ireland protocol. The vote will come 90 minutes after the debate starts.

2pm: Johnson starts giving evidence to the privileges committee

I’ll try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com.