The Metropolitan Police of London has been criticised for pausing updates on penalty notices over breaches of COVID-19 lockdown rules inside Downing Street and other UK government departments in the run-up to the May local elections.
But the Met said on April 21 that it won’t provide updates on any further fines over the so-called partygate scandal until after the local elections, which are set to be held on May 5.
“While the investigation will continue during the preelection period, due to the restrictions around communicating before the May local elections, we will not provide further updates until after 5 May,” a Met spokesman said.
Adam Wagner, an expert on COVID-19 regulations, questioned whether the police should have invoked the rules governing preelection communications, which are intended to place limits on government publicity around elections.
He pointed to the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s (NPCC) guidance on conduct during the preelection period, which states: “Police business does not cease in a pre-election period and normal functions of policing must be performed. But particular care must be taken in this period to avoid activity or publicity that could, or reasonably be seen to, affect or influence the outcome of the election.”
Another clause of the NPCC guidance states that “delaying an announcement could itself influence the political outcome or impede operational effectiveness.”
“To be fair to the Met, I can see why, reading NPCC guidance as a whole, they might think ‘ooh we shouldn’t be releasing information which could influence the election,’” Wagner wrote. “But they are missing the point that deciding not to release information will itself influence the election.”
He said the police “should not care less what the potential political implications of their investigation are,” but instead “treat it like any other criminal investigation and work at the pace convenient to them.”
“If, for example, they believe the prime minister has committed more crimes and are waiting until after the local elections to say so, that is itself political interference—whereas taking their own pace is not,” he wrote.
Despite the Met’s announcement, Downing Street has indicated that it will still say whether Johnson or the cabinet secretary are fined over partygate before the local elections.
A No. 10 spokesman said, “We’ve committed before to being transparent and to letting people know if that were the case. That hasn’t changed. But specifically, the announcement made today—it’s clearly a matter for the Met Police, it’s their investigation, and it’s an independent matter for them.”
The spokesman said that he wasn’t aware of any conversations between Downing Street and Scotland Yard preceding the Met’s announcement.
