Downing Street staff warned not to confer

Staff at British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Downing Street office have been warned by police not to confer when giving answers to a questionnaire about the potential breaking of lockdown regulations or they could be committing a "separate offense".

London's Metropolitan Police service is investigating 12 of 16 alleged social gatherings identified in a report by senior civil servant Sue Gray as having taken place in Downing Street or surrounding government offices when the country was in lockdown.

The investigation will try to establish if the gatherings, three of which Johnson is known to have attended, broke rules in place at the time. The discovery of the gatherings provoked widespread public anger, as they took place at a time when members of the public were not allowed to see family and in some cases were denied a chance to say goodbye to dying relatives, or attend funerals.

The Guardian newspaper said the questionnaire asked recipients to give an explanation for their presence and allows them the opportunity to supply "further circumstances you want the Met to take into account."

"You are entitled to seek legal advice before you respond to the questionnaire and you can discuss your response with your legal adviser," it said.

"If you discuss your answers with anyone else who may have been involved this could amount to a separate offense."

Under the Coronavirus Act of 2020, any breaches of the regulations would be punishable with financial penalties.

When reports of social gatherings began to emerge late last year, initially the Met Police declined to investigate, citing "the absence of evidence and in line with our policy not to investigate retrospective breaches of such regulations".

But following much criticism and more revelations, investigations are now taking place, with officers having been supplied with more than 300 photographs and 500 pages of material, from the Gray inquiry.

Public and political criticism of the Met's handling of the affair, known as Partygate, led to increasingly poor relations between the Met's most senior officer, Cressida Dick, and London Mayor Sadiq Khan, which culminated in Dick's recent resignation as commissioner.

Several Conservative members of Parliament have already called for Johnson to quit over the issue, and if 54 of them submit letters of no confidence in his leadership, he could be challenged and potentially even removed from office.

Johnson is reported to have hired his own private lawyer to deal with the allegations and a close ally told the Financial Times that he stood a good chance of escaping a fine.