Cumbrian MP Mark Jenkinson has been named as one of the MPs who took part in a campaign to undermine the Partygate probe.
A tweet by Mr Jenkinson, who currently represents Workington and is the nominated Conservative candidate for the proposed new Penrith and Solway seat, which said “When the witch hunt has been forgotten, future generations will look back in astonishment” appeared in the annex of a report by the Privileges Committee into a co-ordinated campaign of interference into the committee’s work.
The committee was tasked with investigating if then Prime Minister Boris Johnson misled Parliament about knowing if parties took place during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Its findings and recommendation that he should face a lengthy suspension triggered his resignation.
It has published its latest report to put on record its concerns at the ‘improper pressure’ put on the members and the involvement of members of both houses in attempting to influence the outcome of the inquiry.
Also named are Jacob Rees-Mogg, Priti Patel, Nadine Dorries, Michael Fabricant, Andrea Jenkyns, Brendan Clarke-Smith, and Zac Goldsmith, who has since resigned as a minister.
The report said: “This unprecedented and co-ordinated pressure did not affect the conduct or outcome of our inquiry. However, it had significant personal impact on individual members and raised significant security concerns.
“We have not catalogued every tweet or TV appearance, but have set out in an annex to this report some of the most disturbing examples of the co-ordinated campaign to interfere with the work of the committee.”
In a Tweet in response to the report, Mr Jenkinson said: “On publication of the previous report I said it had overreached. Prior to publication I had not referred to the committee. Yet in another perfect example of gross overreach, the committee use a Tweet that did not refer to them and was about the media witch hunt of Boris Johnson.
“They have literally just performed a Twitter search for terms they don’t like and pasted them in a table.”
