Prime Minister Boris Johnson offered an apology to the House of Commons over breaking the UK lockdown rules that he devised, while insisting it hadn’t occurred to him he had done anything wrong.
Johnson has paid a fine for attending an event at Downing Street on his birthday in June 2020, and may face further fines as London’s Metropolitan Police complete their probe into further government gatherings during the coronavirus lockdowns of the past two years. “Let me also say not by way of mitigation or excuse, but purely, purely because it explains my previous words in this house, that it did not occur to me then or subsequently, the day gathering in the Cabinet Room, just before the vital meeting on Covid strategy, could amount to a breach of the rules," Johnson said. “That was my mistake.
And I apologize for it, unreservedly." MPs will vote in the Commons on Thursday on whether to refer Johnson to the committee on standards for misleading Parliament.