Sunak, Braverman among Asian MPs who skipped voting against Johnson

Prime minister Rishi Sunak and home secretary Suella Braverman were among prominent Asian Conservatives who did not take part in the vote on Monday (19) on a report that concluded Boris Johnson deliberately lied about rule-breaking parties during the pandemic.

MPs voted 354 to seven to endorse the Privileges Committee's report which found Johnson, who resigned as the prime minister last year, guilty of "repeated contempts” of parliament and “seeking to undermine the parliamentary process".

During a five-hour debate on the report, former prime minister Theresa May urged fellow MPs to censure Johnson who had been allegedly involved in Downing Street parties during pandemic lockdowns.

But several Conservative party MPs, including Johnson’s successor Liz Truss, did not participate in the vote.

In addition to Sunak and Braverman, other prominent Asian Tory MPs who did not vote on the report included Sajid Javid, Priti Patel, Alok Sharma and Claire Coutinho.

Incidentally, the resignations of Javid and Sunak from the government in July last year ultimately forced Johnson to step down as the prime minister.

Conservative MPs Ranil Jayawardena, Shailesh Vara, Rehman Chishti, Nusrat Ghani, Gagan Mohindra and Saqib Bhatti also abstained from Monday’s vote as did Labour MPs Preet Kaur Gill, Afzal Khan, Yasmin Qureshi and Naz Shah.

However, Labour MPs Rushanara Ali, Tahir Ali, Apsana Begum, Rupa Huq, Khalid Mahmood, Shabana Mahmood, Seema Malhotra, Navendu Mishra, Lisa Nandy, Virendra Sharma, Tulip Siddiq, Valerie Vaz and Mohammad Yasin all voted in favour of censuring Johnson.

Senior Conservative MPs, including Sunak and many members of the cabinet, skipped the debate and the vote to avoid increasing tensions with party members who remain loyal to the former prime minister.

Sunak, who promised a government of integrity, did not attend the debate in parliament because he was welcoming the prime minister of Sweden and had other meetings, his spokesman said earlier.

Sunak had refused to say how MPs should vote.

“This is a matter for the house, rather than the government. That's an important distinction and that is why I wouldn't want to influence anyone in advance of that vote," he told ITV.

The report recommended that Johnson should be denied a pass giving him automatic access to parliament.

There was "no precedent for a prime minister having been found to have deliberately misled the House", it said.

Johnson has characterised the committee as a "kangaroo court" and said the report was "intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination".

Jacob Rees Mogg, a minister in Johnson's government, said it was "perfectly reasonable" to challenge the views of committee and suggested MPs investigating the former prime minister had "wanted to come to a particular conclusion".

Opinion polls show that Johnson is currently unpopular with most of the public, but he retains the backing of some Conservative Party members.

The report recommended Johnson should be denied a pass giving him automatic access to parliament and would have recommended suspending him from the Commons for 90 days if he had not already resigned.

The parliamentary decision to back the conclusions of the report does not stop Johnson from standing again to be an MP. It is, however, an embarrassment for the politician who rode to power in 2019 promising to deliver Brexit.