What Sue Gray’s Partygate report could look like

The 2017 probe into Damian Green provides clues as to what to expect, as Sean O’Grady explains

If precedent is anything to go by, Sue Gray will be making some judgements of behaviour (PA)

Looking at the progress of the Sue Gray investigation into Partygate purely from the outside, it seems reasonable to conclude the following, even at this pre-publication stage.

First, the Gray report itself may tend towards the more purely factual – but will have things to say about the behaviour of the various individuals and groups she’s had to scrutinise, mostly in Downing Street and the adjoining Cabinet Office.

The list of “gatherings”, “work events” and parties is so long and involves so many people it is no surprise that the report is taking a long time – not to compile, but to make fit for public consumption, in terms of protecting more junior members of the teams, and ensuing any criminal proceedings aren’t compromised.

That seems to be the most likely explanation for the current delays, despite early expressions from Scotland Yard that the police are relaxed about making the details public. Where there is evidence of potential breaches of the law, these have been sent to the Metropolitan Police. The fact that such details have been passed on means that the most serious matters no longer have to be “judged” in quasi-judicial fashion by Gray – but also that she will need to be constrained in what she says.

Fortunately, then, for Gray, she is not going to be in a position where she can be accused of following a vendetta against, say, Boris Johnson, if he is one of those referred to the Met.

Now that the Met and the criminal justice system are involved, if only for the purposes of fixed penalty notices, Gray, and the civil service, cannot be accused of driving a democratically elected prime minister from office, as his fanatical defenders would claim. The job of judging his criminality has been sub-contracted, as indicated in her terms of reference.

However, if precedent is anything to go by, Gray will be making some judgements of behaviour, set against the various codes of ministerial and civil service conduct, including the Nolan principles.

In 2017, Gray was asked by the then cabinet secretary to look into the various allegations against Theresa May’s de facto deputy prime minister, Damian Green. These comprised an unwanted advance towards a journalist, Kate Maltby, and the presence of pornographic material on his work computer some years earlier, as reported by The Sunday Times.

Gray’s brief two-page “conclusions” document was very curt, though balanced, and may give a hint into the style she will adopt on this occasion (though even her findings are likely to be far longer):

“The investigation has concluded:

• That Mr Green’s conduct as a minister has generally been both professional and proper;

• That with competing and contradictory accounts of what were private meetings, it is not possible to reach a definitive conclusion on the appropriateness of Mr Green’s behaviour with Kate Maltby in early 2015, though the investigation found Ms Maltby’s account to be plausible; and

• That Mr Green’s statements of 4 and 11 November, which suggested that he was not aware that indecent material was found on parliamentary computers in his office, were inaccurate and misleading, as the Metropolitan Police Service had previously informed him of the existence of this material. These statements therefore fall short of the honesty requirement of the Seven Principles of Public Life and constitute breaches of the Ministerial Code. Mr Green accepts this.”

Green survived as an MP, but had to resign as deputy prime minister, a loss to May. But note the precise way that Gray expressed herself, and how, even though Green was “acquitted” of one charge, another allegation was left hanging, and another was upheld.

On that basis, there will be sufficient in the findings for both friends and foes of the prime minister to throw at each other. Thus the final stage of this process will return to the political arena and the “court of public opinion”. Gray can then step deftly aside from the controversies.

Even on the face of what we already know, it must be doubtful that Gray will find nothing to criticise in Johnson’s known, admitted and evidenced behaviour in terms of the lofty ideals embodied in the seven Nolan principles of public life and the ministerial code.

Another telling detail, one possibly of concern to the prime minister, is that it wasn’t so much what Green did that finished him off but that he had been “inaccurate and misleading”. It’s not explicitly in her remit to pronounce on Johnson’s statements to parliament – the question of lying to the House of Commons – and she might leave that for others to judge. On the other hand, the Nolan principles do indeed include honesty, openness, accountability and transparency. The disturbing evidence of an undisciplined, unprofessional and unserious Downing Street, presided over by a PM who can’t resist a joke, would take care of the rest of the Nolan principles – leadership, selflessness and integrity.

As the old adage goes, “It’s not the crime that gets you, it’s the cover-up” – and Gray’s report is probably not going to enhance the prime minister’s chances of survival. But he is not on trial, she is not a judge, and it is unlikely that there will be some binary view on Johnson’s fitness for office. As ever, that is for his party – and the public – to decide.

For all the waiting, then, Gray may end up settling remarkably little in political terms – especially if Dominic Cummings has more to share with us.