Taxpayer funding for Boris Johnson’s partygate probe legal costs surges to £220k

The amount of taxpayer cash budgeted for Boris Johnson’s partygate probe legal fees has risen to £222,000 - and could climb even higher.

A senior civil servant said the maximum potential spend has climbed significantly since last year owing to the length of the high-profile parliamentary inquiry.

Mr Johnson is entitled to taxpayer-funded lawyers to advise him on his defence as the matter at hand relates to his time in office.

The Government awarded a contract for the advice worth around £130,000 to law firm Peters and Peters in August 2022.

Alex Chisholm, the Cabinet Office permanent secretary, said on Thursday the budget had since increased to £222,000.

While he said the hope was “we won’t need to spend more than that”, he conceded the new figure was not a limit - and the final cost could be even greater.

The Privileges Committee is investigating whether Mr Johnson misled Parliament when he said that no rules had been broken in Downing Street during the pandemic.

The former prime minister is allowed to have a lawyer sitting next to him during the hearings while he is giving evidence.

While the lawyer would not be allowed to answer on behalf of Mr Johnson, they would be allowed to pass notes or whisper advice to him.

Lawyers would also be allowed to help Mr Johnson prepare in advance and draw up any written submissions if necessary.

Speaking to MPs on the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC), Mr Chisholm said the original figure had to be adjusted because “we didn’t know when the estimate was initially made how long the work of the parliamentary committee would take”.

“At the moment we have estimated that it would be up to a figure of £200,000, which has been published - £222,000 to be precise,” he said.

“We hope and expect that will be a maximum figure but obviously we don’t want to anticipate and certainly could not regulate the conduct of the committee, which is entirely up to them.”

The contract with Peters and Peters has already paid for legal advice from leading KC Lord Pannick, who has produced two opinions on the inquiry.

The first was published on the Government’s website in September 2022 and claimed the Privileges Committee was adopting an “unfair procedure” and a “fundamentally flawed” approach.

This opinion was rejected by the committee, which said it was based on “a systemic misunderstanding of the parliamentary process and misplaced analogies with the criminal law”.

Cabinet Office minister Oliver Dowden admitted to the PACAC that it was unusual for such opinions to be published.

He said he believed it happened “from time to time” while stressing he was limited on what he could say on the matter as he was not a serving minister at that point.

“It’s simply the case that this decision was taken... under a previous administration, under a previous Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and it is not something that I’ve looked into in detail,” he said.

Lord Pannick’s second opinion has not been published.

Mr Chisholm told the committee the contract with Peters and Peters had received “very full scrutiny from all the relevant people”.