At long last the Metropolitan Police has concluded its four month long investigation into the Downing Street lockdown-breaking parties. A team of 12 detectives working on Operation Hillman sorted through 345 documents including emails, door logs, diary entries and witness statements, 510 photographs and CCTV images and 204 questionnaires. And the results of this are now clear to see, with 126 fixed penalty notices (FPNs) being issued for eight events – nearly 1 per cent of the total Covid FPNs handed out by the Met during the pandemic.
The eight events were 20 May 2020 (the BYOB garden party), 18 June 2020 (Cabinet office leaving party), 19 June 2020 (cakegate), 13 November 2020 (ABBA flat party), 17 December 2020 (Christmas quiz), 18 December 2020 (Downing Street party), 14 January 2021 (No. 10 leaving party), and 16 April 2021 (James Slack’s leaving do). Some people received more than one penalty, with 53 men and 73 women in total being hit with at least one fine. Downing Street is yet to comment on whether Boris Johnson has received a second penalty fine, amid much speculation that he could have received another one for the ABBA flat party.
The total cost of all this? Approximately £460,000. Now that the Met probe has finally concluded, looks like there’s nothing stopping Cabinet Office mandarin Sue Gray from finally releasing her long-awaited report. Required reading for all in Westminster…
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