It is now eleven months since the former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, was referred to the Privileges Committee for potentially misleading the House of Commons. Today, we finally get to see his version of events. The Privileges Committee has published a lengthy submission, provided by Mr Johnson — quite predictably at the eleventh hour.

The publication follows on from an interim report by the Committee that set out the principal accusations against him. These essentially boil down to the fact that he may have misled the House, whether inadvertently, recklessly or deliberately, on no less that four separate occasions and that he failed to correct the record expeditiously, as required by a 1997 Resolution of the House on Ministerial Accountability to Parliament. If Johnson is to escape sanction, he will need to rebut each of these claims.

If the Privileges Committee’s interim report might be described as robust, Johnson’s latest attempts to counter the allegations against him might be seen as optimistic. He has submitted a new opinion by his counsel, Lord Pannick KC and Jason Pobjoy (which was published by the Committee earlier this month) as well as a more substantial witness statement, some eight months after he was first invited to provide his evidence.

Many of his claims seek either to challenge the processes adopted by the Committee, or to disprove the fact that he deliberately misled the House, relying on an absence of evidence. 

Other departments put out apologies without admitting to breaking the law

On the former point, quite scandalously, Johnson’s allies have tried to paint the Committee’s processes as unjust and the Committee as a biassed “kangaroo court”, resulting in an intervention by the Leader of the House, Penny Mordaunt. She stated last week that the Committee should be permitted to get on with their work “without fear or favour” and without interference from Members of Parliament or outsiders. Harriet Harman and Bernard Jenkin, the Chair and leading Conservative Member of the Committee, have both stated that some of the external criticisms represented “an attempt to undermine the procedures which the House has established to hold members to account”.

As the former Treasury Solicitor, Sir Jonathan Jones, has observed, the Committee’s procedures “meet the essential features of a fair process”. The accused person knows what he’s accused of, is shown the evidence against him, and is given the opportunity to rebut that evidence and put his side of the story. Notably, the hearing will be heard in public (which is very unusual as, in my experience, hearings about misconduct are always heard in closed session). Evidence from Mr Johnson and all the other witnesses will be taken under oath, or made with a statement of truth, rendering anyone who is untruthful subject to the risk of a prosecution for perjury.

Lord Pannick has accepted that the Committee has met a number of his original concerns. With respect to the use of secret witness evidence, for example, all evidence has been sent to Mr Johnson. The case against him has been clearly stated in the Committee’s interim report.

Pannick initially contended that the Committee could not find Mr Johnson in contempt unless he deliberately misled the House. However, in his second opinion, he has conceded the point that a contempt by misleading the House could be committed in circumstances where it could be established that Johnson later discovered that what he had told the House was incorrect and he knowingly failed to correct the record. This has been my longstanding legal view — and it is likely to be the area where the former Prime Minister faces the greatest danger.

The Committee has already set out its view that Mr Johnson “did not use the well-established procedures of the House” to correct the record at the earliest opportunity. Thus, even if he can convince the Committee that he did not deliberately set out to mislead the House and was acting on advice, if it were to conclude that he had also been reckless in making the original statements to Parliament, Johnson could be in serious trouble.

Johnson should see the hearing as an opportunity to clear his name 

His defence to all of this, as set out in his submission, appears to be that he did not feel he could correct the record until the investigations by the police and Sue Gray had concluded. This seems pretty unconvincing, particularly since other Government Departments had put out nuanced apologies without admitting to breaking the law.

When considering the potential penalties that Mr Johnson may face, if found to be in contempt of the House, some of the commentary has been overblown. An extensive range of options is open to the Committee, from requiring a simple apology to suspension. 

However, the Committee is not the final decision maker. It merely makes a recommendation. At most, it can start a process in train, if it were to recommend that he should be suspended for 10 days or more.

Such a recommendation would need to be endorsed by the House of Commons. If that happened, it would bring into play the procedures under the Recall of MPs Act 2015. A recall petition would then be opened. If 10 per cent of eligible voters signed, then the seat would be vacated and a by-election would be required. Even in those circumstances, Mr Johnson would be entitled to stand as a candidate. 

Hence, Johnson has recourse to an appeal both to the House of Commons and to his own constituents, if he believes he has been treated unfairly by the Committee. This hardly seems like an unjust process.

Rather than seeking to traduce the Committee and its procedures, if Mr Johnson wants to continue his career in Parliament, he should really see the hearing as an opportunity to clear his name. Claiming the Committee is partisan seems counterproductive — unless he already believes that it will find against him and is playing to his supporters in the Commons.

The twilight of his political career? Perhaps. That outcome is still far from certain. He has been written off before.