Partygate was a political scandal in the United Kingdom about parties and other gatherings of government and Conservative Party staff held during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, when public health restrictions prohibited most gatherings.
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Partygate concluded that senior political and civil service leadership "must bear responsibility for this culture".
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Partygate described having a work meeting with Boris Johnson and the Prime Minister's Principal Private Secretary Martin Reynolds, with Carrie Symonds subsequently joining them.
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Partygate said it was obvious that Johnson was furious with them, and had left them in no doubt that he thought they had let him down.
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Partygate said that he was present for about 25 minutes and that he thought it was an allowed work meeting.
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Partygate said, "I should have recognised that even if it could be said technically to fall within the guidance, there would be millions and millions of people who simply would not see it that way".
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Partygate repeatedly apologised and said of the 20 May 2020 event, "I'm saying categorically that nobody told me, nobody said this was something that was against the rules".
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Partygate said that he had commissioned an investigation into whether any rules had been broken, to be undertaken by Cabinet Secretary Simon Case.
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Partygate had decided not to describe the other four dates, writing, "I do not feel that I am able to do so without detriment to the overall balance of the findings".
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Partygate wrote, "A number of these gatherings should not have been allowed to take place or to develop in the way that they did".
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Partygate told the committee that he was confident with the findings of the investigation and that he had been personally involved in the decision-making, and is "not particularly concerned about what the prime minister thinks, I do my job without fear or favour".
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Partygate replied that Downing Street officers were not there to "police what goes on inside the building", but for security purposes, and that he did not "believe that the officer that we're talking about felt that they were seeing something that necessarily breached coronavirus regulations".
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Partygate said Johnson had to resign, a position supported by the Liberal Democrats and SNP.
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Partygate said "the intimidation of a member of parliament is a serious matter" and "The reports of which I'm aware would seem to constitute blackmail".
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Partygate said No 10, "was not observing the regulations they had imposed on members of the public" and accused Johnson of "either not understanding the rules or believing they did not apply to his team".
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Dorries said that Partygate was now only a Westminster bubble issue as the public was "ready to move on" and that "The people who most want to get rid of Boris Johnson are Keir Starmer and the SNP".
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Partygate wrote he had "no intent to break the regulations" and that an FPN was not a criminal conviction, and blamed "a failure of communication" between his and Geidt's offices.
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