Former British prime minister Liz Truss has said a Commons report that found her predecessor Boris Johnson had misled MPs over partygate was “overly harsh”.
The Privileges Committee report concluded that Mr Johnson had misled MPs over partygate and was complicit in a campaign of intimidation against the cross-party panel investigating him.
It recommended that Mr Johnson should be suspended for 90 days as a result, but the former premier resigned as an MP before the report was published.
Ms Truss, who made the comments at a conference in Dublin on Monday, confirmed she would not be back in London in time for the House of Commons vote on the report.
The vote risks deepening the Conservative Party rift between Johnson loyalists and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s administration.
When asked about the Privileges Committee report, Ms Truss said its “judgment was pretty harsh”.
“[Boris Johnson] himself has said he’s made mistakes, and none of us are perfect,” she said.
“I’m not questioning the integrity of the report that parliamentarians have put forward. I think the judgment is pretty harsh, but I’m not questioning the integrity of those people.”
Ms Truss said Mr Johnson had motivated people with his vision of Britain and is “not popular among what you might call the sort of ‘elite intelligentsia’ in Britain”.
She said: “So yes, there are legitimate criticisms of Boris, but there are also a group of people who quite like the status quo the way it is, don’t want things to change, didn’t want Brexit, don’t want to see economic reforms.”
Ms Truss added: “I’m not questioning the integrity of MPs, but I think really the sentence is overly harsh.”
Defending her choice to back Boris Johnson as the Tory leader, she said she still believes he was “the people’s choice to lead our country” following the Brexit vote.
“Boris Johnson and others were absolutely instrumental in winning the Brexit referendum, there is absolutely no doubt about that,” she said.
“If Boris had not been a part of that referendum campaign, I don’t believe Brexit would have won.”
She also said that it is up to the UK Government to “take responsibility” for solving issues facing the country, such as the lack of housing supply.
“I think what has happened now that we’ve left the European Union is the European Union can no longer be blamed for everything, and the UK Government and UK quangos are going to have to take responsibility,” she said.
“I think that’s a good thing because they are directly accountable to the British people.
“I never believed the European Union is the cause of Britain’s problems, and I also don’t believe it’s the solution to Britain’s problems.
“I think our problems lie within our own nation, and leaving the European Union has meant there are no excuses frankly, it’s up to us to solve these problems now.”
