Tory MP Julian Sturdy says following Gray report he is now calling for Johnson"s resignation Julian Sturdy has become the first (and so far only) Conservative MP to say that, in the light of the contents of the Sue Gray report, he is now calling for Boris Johnson’s resignation. A summary of today"s developments Boris Johnson says he has no plan to resign over the Sue Gray report and insisted that staff in his press office thought they were “working around the clock” when they were partying in No 10. In his Commons statement he justified his own attendance at leaving do events on the grounds that they were work, but he said he could not defend what happened later. But, when asked why his press office had said that no parties took place even though the gatherings had actually taken place in the press office, Johnson said his press team thought what they were doing was allowed. The prime minister sidestepped a question about whether his political team had asked for the removal of any facts from the Sue Gray report before its release and did not deny the report saying that he floated with Gray the idea of shelving her report. He insisted that the alleged party in the Downing Street flat on 13 November 2020 was a work event and added he was making inquiries to find out who was rude to cleaning and security staff. Julian Sturdy has become the first Conservative MP to say that in light of the contents of the Gray report he is now calling for Johnson’s resignation. Meanwhile, responding to the report in the Lords, Labour frontbencher Lord Collins of Highbury called on Conservative members to act “to stop this out-of-touch, out-of-control prime minister from driving Britain towards disaster”. Boris Johnson will not be apologising to the Queen during their audience despite Gray’s findings on the party held on the eve of the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral, according to a Conservative party source. Asked if Johnson will be apologising to the Queen during their call this evening, the party source told PA: “What does he need to apologise to the Queen for?” Two-thirds of people believe Boris Johnson should resign given the findings from Gray’s report into Partygate, according to a snap poll from Savanta ComRes. This figure is higher than the proportion who thought the prime minister should resign when he was issued with a fixed-penalty notice last month (61%), but it is lower than when Sue Gray’s initial interim findings were published in January at the height of the scandal (69%). Rishi Sunak will push the button on a controversial windfall tax on energy companies on Thursday, as he lays out measures to ease the pain of rising household bills. The chancellor has confirmed he will announce fresh support for people struggling with the cost of living crisis. The measures are expected to help the poorest households as rampant inflation pushes up the price of everything from food to fuel. Sunak is expected to announce an increase in the warm home discount scheme, which is worth £150 to 3 million low-income households. This figure could rise to as much as £500. The takeover of British microchip manufacturer Newport Wafer Fab by a Chinese-owned company has been called in for a “full national security assessment”, the government said. Boris Johnson said in July 2021 that he had asked the national security adviser, Sir Stephen Lovegrove, to look at the reported £63m purchase by Nexperia, a company said to be linked to the Chinese Communist party, PA reports. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said that the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, has finally called in the takeover. The plot against Boris Johnson could hardly be more different from the sound and fury that characterised the one against Theresa May, which took place in crammed and sweaty meeting rooms and with public denunciations in front of amassed journalists. Instead, those hoping to oust this prime minister tend to meet in pairs over bottles of wine in the Adjournment cafe or catch a quiet word in a corridor. But MPs keeping close tally said they believed at least three more letters had been given to Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the Tory 1922 Committee, asking for a vote of no confidence. Multiple MPs who spoke to the Guardian said Johnson’s future was not secure. “I think this is the day it really hit home to some of my colleagues that we are on the brink of losing the next election,” said one former minister. The culture secretary Nadine Dorries has claimed that Boris Johnson would “absolutely” win a no-confidence vote if one was forced following the publication of the Sue Gray report into Downing Street parties. Speaking on TalkTV’s The News Desk, Dorries criticised Johnson’s detractors within the Conservative party saying: “What the nation doesn’t need is a navel-gazing party and a leadership crisis in the middle of some of the most important and difficult challenges we’ve ever faced as a nation.” She also believes Johnson could not have known about all the events in No 10 due to the size of the building and asserted that some of his critics in the media “are determined to remove the prime minister” because he delivered on Brexit. Rishi Sunak will push the button on a controversial windfall tax on energy companies on Thursday, as he lays out measures to ease the pain of rising household bills. The chancellor has confirmed he will announce fresh support for people struggling with the cost of living crisis. The measures are expected to help the poorest households as rampant inflation pushes up the price of everything from food to fuel. Sunak is expected to announce an increase in the warm home discount scheme, which is worth £150 to 3 million low-income households. This figure could rise to as much as £500. The government could also bring forward a planned increase in benefits that had been expected next year. Sunak could also opt to directly fund a discount on energy bills or offer a council tax rebate. Boris Johnson will not be apologising to the Queen during their audience despite Sue Gray’s findings on the party held on the eve of the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral, according to a Conservative party source. Asked if Johnson will be apologising to the Queen during their call this evening, the party source told PA: “What does he need to apologise to the Queen for? “We all know he wasn’t anywhere near ... he was 50 miles away from the gathering that had happened on the eve of the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh.” Last week, the UK government took further legislative action in a bid to ensure the full delivery of abortion services in Northern Ireland, allowing the Stormont health minister, Robin Swann, to commission services without executive approval. Swann is in the process of seeking legal advice. Lewis, who met with volunteers in Belfast who support women through terminations, told the PA news agency: “The statement and the action we took last week does two things: it takes away the final hurdle that the department of health have had here to have to go through the executive, so the department of health can act, and I expect to see them take action because we have taken away the hurdle that the department of health said was there. “If they don’t take action, there is a secondary point in what we did last week, which is that we have now taken a power so that the secretary of state, I, can act, I have got the legal basis to act and commission services directly in Northern Ireland.” The daughter of a Covid victim has said she believes “selfish” Boris Johnson must resign after “raucous and savage behaviour” in Westminster during the pandemic was laid bare in Sue Gray’s report. Safiah Ngah, 29, wept as she recalled how restrictions in place last February meant she was denied a final goodbye in person with her father, Zahari Ngah, before he died. Ngah said her 68-year-old father, a retired NHS worker, would have been “scared” and vulnerable without his family in hospital during his last days. The family had to settle for a video call as their last contact with him – meanwhile government officials were “cheers-ing”, partying and joking about getting away with it, she said. She told the PA news agency: “It’s disgusting. It makes me embarrassed to be British. “The government is completely out of touch with what real people are experiencing and it’s unsurprising. They’re obviously a group of very privileged people with limited experience.” “I think it is raucous and savage behaviour from the people that are leading us and supposed to be protecting us,” she added. Ngah said she thought her father, who believed in democratic accountability, would have been “ashamed” and “disappointed” at how the government responded to the health crisis. Boris Johnson has dismissed the idea of an alcohol ban in No 10 in the wake of the damning findings of the Sue Gray inquiry. After the prime minister was asked about the suggestion during a meeting of the 1922 Committee of Tory MPs, a party source told PA: “He made the point he’s not a big drinker himself but had alcohol been banned in 1940 we might not have won the second world war. “The fact about No 10 is there is an alcohol policy that now sets guidelines to its use.” He added: “There’s a recognition that at the end of a really long, hard day ... the remedy for decompressing ... is to have a glass of wine or a beer. “So, there’s recognition that part of decompressing at the end of a long day involves having a drink, but not checking out at 4am absolutely legless, having been rude to a member of staff, having thrown up over a sofa.” The source added the prime minister was due to have “an audience with the Queen” this evening virtually following the publication of the Sue Gray Partygate investigation. A Tory party source said the new package of measures to be announced will contain details of where extra funds will be raised, in a hint at a windfall tax. He told PA: “There will be a fresh package of measures in the very near future with an explanation of where some extra funds may be acquired in order to fund that. “On the debate on the windfall tax ... the focus of any package that will be announced by us will not be on raising taxes as an end in themselves, but on what that enables us to do to help the people suffering. “The arguments have been tested rigorously both within the Treasury and within the government, so there’s a high threshold that any package that we bring forward delivers more gain than pain, that the gain is worth the pain, that it does not jeopardise the investment that Conservatives are acutely aware of. “That you don’t introduce random taxes that make the economic environment unpredictable.” The takeover of British microchip manufacturer Newport Wafer Fab by a Chinese-owned company has been called in for a “full national security assessment”, the government has said. The move follows growing pressure from MPs amid concerns that one of the UK’s largest manufacturers of semiconductors has been acquired by a “strategic competitor”. Boris Johnson said in July 2021 that he had asked the national security adviser, Sir Stephen Lovegrove, to look at the reported £63m purchase by Nexperia, a company said to be linked to the Chinese Communist party, PA reports. However in a report last month, the Commons foreign affairs committee said there was no sign that any investigation had begun. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said today that the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, had finally called in the takeover. Under the terms of the legislation, ministers have the power to scrutinise and, if necessary, intervene in the acquisition on national security grounds. The government has an initial period of 30 working days - potentially extendable by up to 45 days - to carry out that assessment. Two-thirds of people believe Boris Johnson should resign given the findings from Sue Gray’s report into Partygate, according to a snap poll from Savanta ComRes. This figure is higher than the proportion who thought the prime minister should resign when he was issued with a fixed-penalty notice last month (61%), but it is lower than when Sue Gray’s initial interim findings were published in January at the height of the scandal (69%). While 49% believe it is not yet time to allow Johnson to move on from Partygate, 38% say that it is time, including one in five (21%) who have an unfavourable opinion of him. And while 52% say they think worse of Johnson given the findings of the Gray report, that includes 73% of those who already have an unfavourable opinion of him.