What can we expect from the Committee of Privileges looking into Boris Johnson?

Now that the House of Commons Committee of Privileges has been asked to determine whether the prime minister misled parliament over “Partygate”, it’s worth considering the personnel involved, and the prospects of the prime minister being “acquitted”. (The actual substance of their proceedings may not begin for some months, however, because they will wait the completion of the police investigation and publication of the Sue Gray report. They will also take time to collect evidence, documents and interview witnesses, possibly including the prime minister).

The committee itself is unusual in having, by convention, an opposition chair and a government-party majority – and also being compact. There are only seven of them, all MPs. The committee is chaired by Chris Bryant, the prominent Labour backbencher. In addition to Bryant, there are four Conservatives, one other Labour MP, and an SNP representative. Because Bryant has made some trenchant criticisms of Boris Johnson, he has voluntarily recused himself from the committee when it considers this matter.

While all committee members across parliament seek to be non-partisan and objective in their work, and often succeed, nonetheless they declare interests and, being political animals, they have their own views, prejudices and particular backgrounds. The remaining opposition MPs involved, Yvonne Fovargue (Labour, Makerfield) and Allan Dorans (SNP, Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock), may be expected to share the general scepticism shown towards the prime minister’s version of events and his segments to the house. The Conservatives, the preponderant group, are perhaps less predictable.

Given Bryant’s decision to stand aside, it’s likely the stand-in chair will be Sir Bernard Jenkin, (Conservative, Harwich and North Essex), who is much the most experienced of the other members. Jenkin recused himself from the earlier investigation to Owen Paterson, on the grounds that Paterson was a personal friend – as well as fellow Conservative – which suggests a degree of integrity shared with Bryant. Even so, he voted to save Paterson in the abortive attempt to rescue him from immediate censure.

Jenkin was first elected to the Commons in 1992, and has a relatively independent frame of mind. It’s unlikely at this stage of his career (he is 63) he’ll be fishing for a job in government. His seat is very safe, so he need not fear any backlash locally whichever way he jumps. He is certainly a long-standing Brexiteer, which you might think him sympathetic to Johnson, and he voted for him in the 2019 leadership contest. However there was some bad blood between Jenkin and former Johnson adviser Dominic Cummings over who should be running the 2016 Leave campaign, when Jenkin organised an attempted coup against Cummings.

As Partygate has dragged on, Jenkin has made the occasional negative intervention, although has displayed a fairly mainstream Tory attitude to Partygate. In the Commons in January, he declared warned that “backbenches of the Conservative Party need no reminders about how to dispose of a failing leader” and told Johnson to “concentrate on the fact that the country wants results” in restructuring the Number 10 team.

Alberto Costa, MP for South Leicestershire since 2015, is in another safe seat, but is a younger man (50), with executive ambitions and is technically a member of the government as parliamentary private secretary (unpaid bag carrier) to the attorney general, Suella Braverman, who is rabidly loyal to the prime minister. On the other hand he actually resigned his previous junior post in the Johnson government over rights for EU nationals, and was a strong Remain supporter. For what it’s worth, he supported Michael Gove in the 2019 leadership election.

During the Paterson affair last November, Costa said the findings of the standards commissioner should go to an independent expert panel, including members of the judiciary, to consider what action to take.

“I don’t think MPs should be adjudicating on issues against other MPs. Let the commissioner present her face to judges and let them be the ultimate arbiters,” he told Sky News. “We need to change the rules, make it more transparent, bring in members of the judiciary.”

The other two Tories, both first elected in 2019, have been more critical of the prime minister than Costa and Jenkin. Andy Carter was returned for Warrington South with a modest majority of 2,010 votes over Labour in a classic marginal seat. Early in the Partygate scandal, when Allegra Stratton resigned, Carter said he was “really angry” after watching the leaked footage of her mock press conference, and said “there is now excuse for that type of behaviour”. He added that “it is important that we have an inquiry to understand if the party did, or did not, happen at Number 10 days before Christmas in a lockdown”. Now he’ll be able to help conduct that very inquiry. He seems to have been a Remainer.

The new-ish Conservative MP for the safe seat of Newbury may be the hardest to convince about Johnson’s “innocence”. Laura Farris has previously told BBC Politics live she “would have declined” any such invitation to a party: “The rules were clear and unequivocal at that point in time. I don’t think anybody thought you were meant to be having parties.” For what it’s worth, Farris was a Remainer and voted to save Paterson in the key Commons vote last year.

A barrister by trade, Farris, like Costa (a solicitor), will no doubt take the review very seriously as will they all. The committee on behalf of the Commons will set itself a high bar before it condemns Johnson. As Bryant said in the recent debate, the committee have to be satisfied about the extent of the intent to mislead the Commons, possibly based on precedent set when they considered select committee testimony given by a Labour cabinet minister:

“As the clerk advised in the case of whether Stephen Byers had misled the House on a single occasion in 2001: ‘In order to find that Mr Byers committed a contempt in the evidence session of 14 November 2001, the committee will need to satisfy itself not only that he misled the sub-committee, but that he did so knowingly or deliberately.’ As I said, that is quite a high bar, but it is for the Privileges Committee to decide that.”

All things considered, it might be a close-run thing, based on what we know now, given the composition of the committee and the standard of “guilt” required. Then again they may conclude that the events the prime minister actually attended were so obviously outside the rules that no reasonable person could believe it otherwise. The stakes are high, because lying to the house is conventionally reason enough to resign as an MP.

In the end the committee may end up with a slightly fudged report and recommendation, and throw the issue back to the Commons as a whole, assuming the prime minister is still around by then. As ever, the weight of opinion in the parliamentary Conservative Party, and public opinion, will be Johnson’s final arbiter.