Boris Johnson’s no-confidence vote: PM tells cabinet to ‘draw a line’ under

Boris Johnson used his opening address to cabinet this morning to seek to draw a line under Partygate. PA Media has his words, and he tried to flesh out the line in the press notice issued early this morning (see 9.41am) about how the government is now focusing on “what the people of this country care about most”. Here are the main points.

• Johnson claimed yesterday’s vote was “very important” because it meant the government could now “draw a line” under Partygate. He said:

It was a very important day because we are able now to draw a line under the issues that our opponents want to talk about and we are able to get on talking about the issues, what the issues that I think the people want … and what we are doing to help them and to take the country forward. That is what we are going to do. We are going to focus exclusively on that.

• He claimed the government had a “massive agenda” for change. He said:

We are going to get on with the massive agenda that we were elected to deliver in 2019.

It is a huge, huge thing that we are all part off, to really transform infrastructure, skills and technology, uniting and levelling up across the country, unleashing potential across the whole of the UK.

It is the totally morally, socially, economically, politically the right thing to do and we should be proud, proud, proud of what we’re doing.

• He said he wanted ministers to focus on “cutting the costs of government”. Arguing that the government was making a “huge investment” in public services, he said:

But it’s not enough just to spend money. We have got to spend it wisely.

We as Conservative ministers, we have got to make sure at every stage that we are driving reform and driving value.

So what I’m going to ask you all to do in each of your departments is make sure that you’re thinking the whole time about cutting the costs of government, about cutting the costs that business has to face and of course cutting the costs that everybody else faces, families up and down the country.

But he also said ministers should come up with ideas for public service reform too.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I’m going to ask everybody to come forward with ways in which we can, as I say, cut costs, drive reform and make sure that we understand that in the end, it is people who have the best feel for how to spend their own money rather than the government or the state.

And that is our fundamental, Conservative instinct and that way, I think we will be able to get on with our agenda, making this the most prosperous, the most successful economy in Europe.

• But he also said organisations like the Passport Office and the DVLA had to be more efficient. “I think in particular people deserve to get their passport and their driving licence just as much as they deserve to get their test, their scan or their screen on time, promptly and we’ve got to focus on that,” he said.

• He claimed the government could deliver tax cuts in the future. He said:

We will have the scope, by delivering tax cuts, I…