assurance at a morning meeting, Mr Johnson noted that “[s]he is not sure”, that “[f]rankly, I don’t [remember]” Mr Case doing so, and that “I never claimed that one of those people I had giving me assurances was Simon Case”.[1]
163. Mr Johnson was asked why he had relied on assurances from Mr Doyle and Mr Slack, rather than from permanent civil servants or government lawyers. He replied:
The simple answer is that, when I needed to discover what had happened, and whether the Rules were broken, I went first of course to—or I asked first—the senior adviser who was there, and that was Jack Doyle. The following week, you can see that Jack Doyle says in a WhatsApp to me: “you can say ‘I’ve been assured there was no party and no Rules were broken’”. So he says that again to me. I also then rang James Slack. Both Jack, and James Slack, are people who I have the utmost regard for, and I believed they would be completely straight with me about what had happened, and they both said that the Rules had not been broken.
The reason I didn’t ask a lawyer or another senior civil servant was because they were the people who had been there, and they were the direct—they could give a view about the legality of that event that I didn’t think a non-eyewitness would be able to do.[2]
164. Mr Johnson subsequently wrote to us to state that:
In this exchange, Mr Costa incorrectly implied that James Slack was a political adviser rather than a permanent civil servant, and I failed to correct that impression. In fact, James Slack was a permanent senior civil servant as he was the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesperson, appointed under Theresa May, from 10 February 2017 until 9 February 2021. However, he was no longer a civil servant or working within Downing Street in December 2021 when I spoke to him about the event on 18 December 2020.[3]
165. We note that while the position of Prime Minister’s Official Spokesperson is not a politically appointed role, Mr Slack had not been a career civil servant prior to his appointment to that role; he was a journalist and had worked as political editor of the Daily Mail. We also note that Mr Johnson appointed Mr Slack to serve as his Director of Communications, a role that is a political appointment, in early 2021.
166. In the oral evidence Mr Johnson was further asked why, when the initial assurances had been given to him by Mr Doyle and Mr Slack, he did not subsequently discuss the assurances with the Cabinet Secretary, his Principal Private Secretary, or a government lawyer. Mr Johnson replied that Mr Reynolds, who had given evidence that he believed the Rules had been followed at all times, was a lawyer; and he drew attention to the evidence from Ms Dines and Mr Griffith that at a morning meeting “the view of the assembled civil servants and advisers was that, no, we hadn’t broken the Rules”.[4]
