The controversy over the Sue Gate report into UK’s Partygate scandal

The trouble for British prime minister Boris Johnson continues with the Partygate scandal refusing to die down.

After being found to have participated in gatherings during the COVID-19 lockdown, breaking the rules, there are now allegations that Downing Street attempted to dilute Sue Gray’s report on the Partygate scandal.

Reacting to the claims, Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, was quoted as telling Sky News’ Sophy Ridge that he is confident Gray could not be influenced by anybody and having worked with her before, he “would not question her independence”.

“Knowing Sue Gray, I don’t believe anybody would be able to pressure her into putting any kind of report out that she wasn’t confident with.

“I’m confident Sue Gray had the freedom to write the report she did write and publish,” he was quoted as saying.

We take a closer look at what the controversy is all about — who is Sue Gray, what changes did she allegedly make at the behest of Downing Street and how the Opposition is reacting to it.

What is the Sue Gray report all about?

Following media reports of multiple gatherings in or near Downing Street — where the British prime minister lives and works — throughout the pandemic, also known as the Partygate scandal, led to an investigation being launched.

Sue Gray, a senior civil servant once nicknamed ‘deputy god’, was tasked to look at the nature and purpose of the gatherings, including who went to them, and whether they broke coronavirus rules.

The second permanent secretary to the Cabinet office with responsibility for the Union and the Constitution became a popular name when she led several high-profile investigations between 2012 and 2018 and was involved in the resignations of three cabinet ministers.

In 2017, her report into Conservative minister Damian Green found he had lied about the presence of pornographic images on his parliamentary computer and prompted then-prime minister Theresa May to fire her close cabinet ally.

Gray earlier investigated claims that Andrew Mitchell, Tory chief whip at the time, insulted police officers in Downing Street with the class-charged derogatory term “pleb”.

Former senior official David Normington had told BBC radio earlier this year that Gray was the best person within officialdom to lead the internal investigation.

“She’s a feisty senior civil servant and I think will tell us the truth as it is,” Alistair Graham, who worked with her when he was chairman of a standards in public life committee, was quoted as telling AFP.

What were Sue Gray’s findings?

In her report, the senior civil servant investigated 16 events between May 2020 and April 2021 and said that “what took place at many of these gatherings and the way in which they developed was not in line with COVID guidance at the time”.

In her 60-page report, Gray stated that “many of these events should not have…