Boris Johnson announces big changes to Downing Street in wake of Sue Gray report

Boris Johnson has promised to make changes ‘now’ to the way Downing Street and the Cabinet Office is run following the release of Sue Gray’s report into Number 10 parties during lockdown.

Addressing The Commons this afternoon, the Prime Minister said ‘it is time to sort out what Sue Gray rightly calls the fragmented and complicated leadership structures of Downing Street’.

Johnson said he will do this by creating an ‘office of the prime minister’ with a permanent secretary to lead Number 10, adding that it is time to make sure the civil service codes are ‘properly enforced’.

Continuing his statement, Johnson stressed that his government can be trusted, saying: “It is whether this government can be trusted to deliver and I say, Mr. Speaker, yes we can be trusted to deliver.”

The Prime Minister also apologised ‘for the things we simply didn’t get right’ and ‘the way this matter has been handled’. 

He said: “Firstly, I want to say sorry – and I’m sorry for the things we simply didn’t get right and also sorry for the way this matter has been handled.”

Read More: Sue Gray’s initial findings into No 10 parties published revealing a ‘failure of leadership’

“But it isn’t enough to say sorry. This is a moment when we must look at ourselves in the mirror and we must learn.

“While the Metropolitan Police must yet complete their investigation, and that means there are no details of specific events in Sue Gray’s report, I of course accept Sue Gray’s general findings in full, and above all her recommendation that we must learn from these events and act now.”

However, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer slammed Johnson as a ‘man without shame’ for not resigning over Gray’s initial findings, which concluded ‘serious failures’ of leadership and judgment by different parts of No 10 throughout the 2020 lockdowns.

Speaking to The Commons, Sir Keir said Johnson and everyone implicated in the scandal are ‘degrading themselves and their offices’ and have frayed the ‘bond of trust between government and the public’.

This comes in the wake of a shortened twelve-page version of Sue Gray’s investigation into the various allegations of parties and gatherings in Number 10 during the lockdowns being released to the public.

In her report, Sue Gray noted that there was a ‘serious failure to observe not just the high standards expected of those working at the heart of Government, but also of the standards expected of the entire British population at the time’.

The report acknowledged that every citizen has been impacted by the pandemic, reading: “Everyone has made personal sacrifices, some the most profound, having been unable to see loved ones in their last moments or care for vulnerable family and friends.”

Stand-out points from the report include:

• There were failures of leadership and judgment by different parts of No 10 and the Cabinet Office at different times.
• The excessive consumption of alcohol is not appropriate in a professional workplace at any time.
• The use of the garden at No 10 Downing Street should be primarily for the Prime Minister and the private residents of No 10 and No 11 Downing Street.
• The leadership structures are fragmented and complicated and this has sometimes led to the blurring of lines of accountability.
• Some staff wanted to raise concerns about behaviours they witnessed at work but at times felt unable to do so.

The report concluded by acknowledging that a number of these gatherings ‘should not have been allowed to take place or to develop in the way that they did’.