Boris Johnson and his wife Carrie will not receive any further partygate fines, it emerged on Thursday, as the Met announced it had completed its investigation into Covid breaches across Government.
Scotland Yard has handed out a total of 126 penalty notices for Covid rule breaking at eight events in Downing Street and across Whitehall.
The £460,000 investigation, named Operation Hillman, saw a team of 12 detectives work through 345 documents, including emails, door logs, diary entries and witness statements, 510 photographs and CCTV images and 204 questionnaires.
It led to 53 fines being handed to men and 73 to women, with some getting multiple penalties. It is understood that 28 people were given between two and five fines.
The focus of the storm is now set to shift swiftly onto the report by senior civil servant Sue Gray.
The findings of her investigation are expected to lay out more details of the culture in No10 which has seen it allegedly become the building in Britain to receive the most fines for breaking Covid laws.
It is understood however that Ms Gray’s report will not be published this week and is more likely to be unveiled next week, before Parliament rises for the May recess.
Assistant Met Commissioner Helen Ball said police had “no objections at all” to Sue Gray’s report being published.
She said police had made sure that in each case they had enough evidence to prosecute the person fined in court if the penalty was contested, but that no one had done this so far. She said 97 of the fines had already been paid.
The Prime Minister, his wife and Chancellor Rishi Sunak were fined £50 each for attending Mr Johnson’s surprise 56th birthday on June 19 2020.
Ms Ball said: “There is no doubt that the pandemic impacted all of us in so many ways and strong feelings and opinions have been expressed on this particular issue.
“When Covid regulations were introduced, the Met was clear that whilst we would not routinely investigate breaches of regulations retrospectively, there may be occasions when it would be appropriate to do so.
“The information that we received with regard to the alleged breaches in Downing Street and Whitehall was sufficient to reach our criteria to begin such an investigation.
“Our investigation was thorough and impartial and was completed as quickly as we could, given the amount of information that needed to be reviewed and the importance of ensuring that we had strong evidence for each FPN referral.
“This investigation is now complete.”
